


With a Furtive Hand, Always With Sincere Faith

by BuggreAlleThis



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Asexuality Spectrum, Dissociation, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Executive Dysfunction, Graphic Rape, Hanukkah, Heaven is Terrible (Good Omens), Hurt Aziraphale (Good Omens), Hurt/Comfort, Intercrural Sex, M/M, Metaphysical Sex, Only Gabriel dies, Other, Protective Crowley (Good Omens), Rape Aftermath, Rape Recovery, Sexual Abuse, Telepathic Sex, Telepathy, Tosca - Freeform, depersonalisation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-13
Updated: 2019-11-29
Packaged: 2020-10-17 21:56:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 27
Words: 81,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20628167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BuggreAlleThis/pseuds/BuggreAlleThis
Summary: Gabriel is set outside the Heavenly Veil by God as punishment for his role in Aziraphale's attempted execution. Powerless and bound to the mortal plane for the foreseeable future, he goes to the only angel he knows on Earth.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic will have discussions of violation, boundaries, trust and consent woven throughout. Please heed the 'Rape/Non-con' tag. I won't be warning in individual chapters, but if you have anything specific you want you ask me about I'm happy to tell you in the comments!
> 
> There is a graphic scene of anal rape in Chapter 5, and a consensual intercrural sex scene in Chapter 27.
> 
> I told my friends that I had an idea for a fun comedy fic, and it turned into this. I played myself.

Bear with me then, if lawful what I ask:  
Love not the heavenly Spirits, and how their love  
Express they? by looks only? or do they mix  
Irradiance, virtual or immediate touch?  
  
To whom the Angel, with a smile that glowed  
Celestial rosy red, Love's proper hue,  
Answered. Let it suffice thee that thou knowest  
Us happy, and without love no happiness.  
Whatever pure thou in the body enjoyest,  
(And pure thou wert created) we enjoy  
In eminence; and obstacle find none  
Of membrane, joint, or limb, exclusive bars;  
Easier than air with air, if Spirits embrace,  
Total they mix, union of pure with pure  
Desiring, nor restrained conveyance need,  
As flesh to mix with flesh, or soul with soul.

\- Raphael to Adam, _Paradise Lost_ Book 8, 614-629

It was a great joy of angelkind, second only to the joy to Her Presence, to be able to embrace and mingle with each other, and taste the thousand shades and colours of Her goodness that she had scattered throughout her firstborn.

Gabriel knew that his offering was one of might and strength. To his partner he gave the gift of absolute helplessness and the bliss which that afforded. In his embrace they were pinned and unmoving, and around them and in them he moved with the irresistible force of the Almighty. Surrendering to such dominance flushed an angel with the warmth of trust and the unexpected freedom of humility; in Gabriel they could glimpse the awesome power of God. Recognising the potential for force made the sweetness and relief of mercy all the more potent. He left those he embraced ravished, and sated, and he deigned to embrace all who dared approach him and ask for his favour.

It was Michael who embraced with that strange unpredictability: either terrifying violence, or sweet mercy. They took the latter role when they and Gabriel embraced some fortunate spirit together and left them barely conscious from ecstasy.

Uriel’s embraces were slow, austere, and devastating. They were solemn and mystical; Gabriel did not embrace with her as often as he did Michael, who alone with Lucifer was his equal, but the occasions were all the more welcome for their rarity. Her control was a thing of wonder, and something in their spirits matched well.

But it was Lucifer who was his equal in every way. Gabriel was hard might, and Lucifer blazing power, all heat and light, blinding and overwhelming. Their embraces always had a delightful sting of competition in them; they tumbled through the cosmos, wrestling until they were both mad with the pleasure of it, and laughing when they pulled apart. They both enjoyed discussion in the aftermath, and sometimes their joyful arguments resulted in another embrace.

Raphael’s embraces were cool, refreshing: a soothing, healing balm that gently spread through every breath of him.

Jophiel was a little too intellectual for Gabriel. They embraced from time to time, and Gabriel always learnt something new: Jophiel’s offering was some new wisdom or understanding. She and Raziel favoured each other.

Raziel was an interesting angel to embrace. You needed to be in the right frame of mind to enjoy Raziel’s embrace, and it was a rare angel who sought him out. Gabriel was one of them. To mingle with the Lord of Secrets was to be seen right to one’s core, to submit to an unflinching, probing gaze. In these days, there were no secrets, and so no one quite knew what Raziel’s purpose was.

His depth was matched by Diganiel’s; Gabriel loved embracing Digainiel. They were a cherub, and flashed with a million aspects, scattering colours. The gold of wheat fields and the dark blue of the depths; contrasts and shimmering and sparkling.

The cherubim mostly embraced each other, and then only rarely. Their entire beings were fixated on God Herself, and they could hardly bear to tear themselves away from Her. Gabriel had noticed that when sent out of the Presence on some task or other, they would embrace other angels with far more regularity, even a kind of need. They felt Her absence like a physical pain, and mingling with other angels reminded them that they were not alone.

With one exception.

Gabriel had been spending more time with the cherubim of late; he had been placed in charge of Eden, the laboratory for the new creation which God was building up to revealing. She had hand-picked a few of the cherubim to patrol the Garden, to guard it and bring reports back to Her.

This work, like the entire new arena of operations, had brought with it plenty of grumbling. Grumbling was also a new creation, and one which the angels had made all on their own. Lucifer was grumbling that he knew that God was making new beings because She was tired of Her firstborn, that She was going to give to them all sorts of gifts which She refused to give the angels.

The cherubim were grumbling that they had been stationed in the material plane, with _corporations_ and _physical sensations_. In this plane there was new dimension called _time_, which was divided up into all sorts of chunks: one such chunk was a “_day_”, which was a whole cycle of the Sun around the Earth. Quite complicated stuff. Gabriel was fielding on average one complaint a “day” from the cherubim, who all asked to return to the Sapphire Throne, to throw off their cumbersome bodies and contemplate the Beatific Mystery and minister to Her again.

With one exception.

The other cherubim didn’t really rate Aziraphale, Gabriel knew that much. It was as though he lived in a dimension of his own. He could barely look another cherub in the eyes, but would sit at God’s feet or tug at Her hand without a second thought. He fidgeted, fluttering his wings or clutching his hands or rearranging the feathers of his secondary wings. He went off alone in the Garden and brought back flowers or insects or stones. Physical artefacts, to the Courtly Plane!

And the rumour was that he did not embrace, at all; at least, no one that Gabriel had spoken to had, or knew anyone who claimed to have.

It was all a bit… well. Freakish.

Gabriel had a vague feeling that this was uncharitable, and he resolved to learn more. If he was in charge of the cherubim of the Garden, Aziraphale was within his purview. Aziraphale who had never complained about his stationing, and who seemed to… enjoy it.

All very odd.

“Aziraphale!” he called out, the next time he saw him going between the Garden and the Court. Aziraphale’s eagle head gave a shrill whistle. As a cherub he was granted a covering for his nakedness, and his secondary wings were pearlescent linen in one light and pearlescent feathers in another. They were, however, dirty, flecked here and there with a deep brown colour. Probably from being trailed in the mud in Eden. “What you got there, buddy?”

“Ah!” Aziraphale had been looking extremely anxious, but now he smiled. He lifted one wing, and held out his hands. They were cupped around a small creature, with black legs, and a shiny back. It looked like an emerald, but it was opaque, with a bright iridescence across it. “Isn’t it beautiful?”

“Very handsome!” Gabriel said, with perfect sincerity. Aziraphale smiled at him, and tipped his hands, so the creature fell into Gabriel’s palm. “Oh!”

“Its little feet tickle, don’t they?” Aziraphale said. He reached up and scratched behind his ox ears; his eagle head turned around and nibbled at his fingers. “It’s so pretty.”

“What’s it called?”

“It doesn’t have a name yet. God said that the humans will name them – will name all the creatures.”

In his shock, Gabriel dropped the creature, which went scuttling off in the grass. Aziraphale made a small sound of grief, and stooped to look for it. “What did you just say?”

“Oh, it’s gone. Oh.” Aziraphale straightened up. “Sorry, Gabriel?”

“What did you just say, about the naming?”

“Oh, just that none of the creatures down here have names yet. Once the humans have been created God said that they’ll name them themselves.”

Gabriel was scandalised. _God_ named things. God called every angel into being _by naming them_. But the humans were going to be given this power too? To create names for creatures? “How do you know?”

“God told me,” Aziraphale said, as though this was obvious. “I found a little creature with wings and a sword on its bottom. I brought it to Her and asked Her what it was called, and She said nothing yet. It doesn’t have a true name until the humans name it.”

“Wow.” Maybe Aziraphale wasn’t such a dud after all, Gabriel thought, if God was openly sharing Her plans with him. Plans which She hadn’t yet told the archangels. Naming was a power that only God had had until now, because only God had what She called _an imagination_. It looked like She planned to give the humans this too, with the power it afforded. The power to give other creatures their purpose, to shape their natures.

Becoming friends with Aziraphale might have some benefits…He held up his right hand, palm out, the usual way to initiate an embrace.

Aziraphale’s lion head suddenly growled in warning; Aziraphale jumped. He looked at Gabriel’s hand as though it was a sword as well. “Oh! Oh?”

Gabriel wiggled his fingers. “Wondered if you wanted to embrace? We’ve never done it before.”

“To embrace? Me and you?” Aziraphale was _cringing_ again; it was very unbecoming for someone of his rank. His four wings fluttered. “That’s… ever so kind of you. Very flattering. But, um. I’m afraid not. I’m so sorry.”

The world seemed to twist; Gabriel felt as though he’d been wrenched one foot to the left. “What?”

No one had ever refused him before. It was rare enough that he was the one to _ask_, but whenever he did, the answer was always yes, with high levels of enthusiasm.

“I don’t want to. I’m so sorry. It’s nothing to do with you at all,” Aziraphale said. His eagle head stared up, his ox head down. His lion’s head stared to the right, and his human to the left. Gabriel suddenly realised that the cherub _was lying_. “Obviously, I mean,” Aziraphale continued. “You’re… the Archangel Gabriel!”

“Right!” Gabriel said. Finally, Aziraphale was saying something that made sense. “Yes. I mean, I stand at the left hand of God. Wouldn’t that…?”

“I’m quite happy just to sit at Her feet. Standing up in front of everyone – too frightening for me! I’m not as brave as you and Michael.”

Gabriel was feeling more and more confused. He felt like a star, as though some great, hot energy was building up inside him. He hadn’t even been particularly _excited_ to embrace Aziraphale before; it had just been a friendly gesture, a way to get to know him better. He’d thought Aziraphale would turn pink with the pleasure of being chosen, flutter his pretty wings, mingle with grace and gratitude. Instead this angel thought that he could do better than _Gabriel_? “Then I don’t understand why you wouldn’t want to embrace?”

“I just… I just don’t.” Aziraphale still couldn’t meet his eyes; he was pink, but it was not with pleasure. “I’m ever so sorry, Gabriel. Please, don’t be offended.”

“I’m not offended!” Gabriel said loudly. He tried to think through this new puzzle. “You don’t really mingle with anyone, do you? Now that I think of it.”

Aziraphale gave a nervous wriggle. His lion’s head shook and the white-gold hair of his mane flapped. “No, no. I’m not really one for that.”

“Have you ever embraced _anyone_?” Gabriel said. The storming heat in his spirit calmed a little. This was far more understandable. “Honestly, you’ll like it,” he said. “It feels great.”

“I’m sure, but I don’t want-“ Aziraphale began

It was easier to show him than to explain. Gabriel grabbed Aziraphale’s hand and flowed around him, pressing through his physical corporation to the spirit within.

He felt a great multitude of things. At the centre, Aziraphale himself: a white-blue flame flickering, a sense of things intricate and soft and deep. But around that, a maelstrom.

_It did not feel great_.

Embracing meant a heightened awareness of the lover’s thoughts and emotions, and Gabriel had no words for what Aziraphale was suddenly awash with. The words did not yet exist. He only knew that it crept and shuddered across Aziraphale’s skin, and thus Gabriel’s own. It was as though the white-blue flame was caught in ice, frozen, guttering.

Gabriel pulled back and stared in horror. The cherub stood before him, twisting one hand in his feathers, and the other – the one which Gabriel had touched – the other he shook, as though it had soil or water or some other physical matter on it.

“I, I have to go,” Aziraphale said, all four heads looking anywhere but at Gabriel. “I’m so sorry – have to-“ Aziraphale bowed to him, then took off; the wind of his ascent whipped around Gabriel, and the archangel stared after him.

_What had that been_?

It bothered him for the rest of the “day”, which mainly involved a cherub called Chezeqiraphael weeping in his office because one of the creatures had sprayed impure bodily fluids on her. He signed off her request to return to the Courtly Plane with barely a word. Then, on a whim, he held out a hand in comfort, and when she took it, underneath the surge of gratitude and awe were the remnants of her earlier emotion.

It was the same that Aziraphale had felt.

Aziraphale had felt the same way about him initiating an embrace that his sibling had felt about an impure physical creature soiling her.

He no longer felt merely confused and disturbed. He now felt something _sharper_.

He barely knew what to do with himself. Energy rose and spiked in him whenever he remembered Aziraphale’s emotion. Luckily, he knew an excellent way to burn some of that off.

*

The young stars of what would one day be known as the Tarantula Nebula cried out in radiation and strong winds, sending filaments of crimson and violet and white light in a twisting, spidery inferno.

Of course, spiders and tarantulas had not yet been named. The angels just thought that it was beautiful.

Gabriel, Michael and Lucifer floated together in the sleepy, lazy bliss which followed a vigorous embrace. The light splayed and played across their wings and their bodies. Lucifer twirled Michael’s hair in his fingers, and Michael pressed their hand into Gabriel’s spirit. “You’re still disturbed.”

Gabriel sighed, and straightened up. With a beat of his wings, a new star was born. “I can’t help it. No one’s ever said that they didn’t want to embrace me before! What did I do wrong?”

“Nothing,” Lucifer said. He looked bored by the topic of conversation. “He’s a freak, Gabriel. Diganiel told me all about him. The cherubim all think he’s odd.”

“Lucifer’s right. Don’t let him bother you.”

“Well, God obviously thinks there’s something more to him! She told him about the naming thing, and anything to do with humanity is so classified that even I-“

“Wait, wait,” said Lucifer. “What? What naming thing?”

“Why we don’t know what any of the creatures on the physical plane are called yet. Aziraphale said that God told him that She was going to let the humans name them.”

Lucifer surged up then. “The _humans_ are going to be given the right to name creatures? The secondborn? _We’re_ not even allowed to name _ourselves_ – only God has the power to name Her creations!”

Gabriel shrugged helplessly. “That’s not the important thing, Lucifer – surely if he was going to embrace anyone-”

“What are you _talking_ about?” Lucifer roared. “Of course it’s the important thing! Why do _they_ get to if we don’t? I’m going to go and talk to Her. You’ve heard this weirdo wrong, Gabriel.” He beat his wings, and flew away. “I’m going to talk to Her!”

Gabriel went to follow, and Michael held him back. “Don’t. You know what he’s like when he’s like this. Better to let him talk it out with Her. Aziraphale probably misunderstood.”

“Yeah, probably,” Gabriel said, and lay back against them with a sigh. Where Lucifer was hot, they were cold – they soothed his spirit. “It was horrible, Michael. That thing I felt in him.”

“It’s not in you,” they assured him, arms and wings around him. “Maybe he knows that’s inside of him, so he doesn’t embrace anyone in case they see it.”

Gabriel perked up. That made sense. “The emotion is something that’s just inside _him…_ But God wouldn’t create him like that, would She? She wouldn’t make an angel with that kind of poison inside.”

“Of course not. We’re beings of perfect love and goodness,” Michael said. “If Aziraphale’s imperfect it’s something that he’s cultivated himself.”

Gabriel kissed their hair. This thought was oddly comforting, and Gabriel nodded to himself. Yes. Aziraphale was just a freak – a willing one. That explained everything.

*

The maelstrom of emotions which Gabriel had felt in Aziraphale were the feelings of _fear_ and _revulsion_ and _shock_.

These words had not been invented yet, but would be very, very soon.


	2. Chapter 2

“To the _world_.” Aziraphale’s heart could have burst with happiness. He sipped the champagne (delicious, notes of nectarine and rose), but he couldn’t take his eyes off Crowley.

He _wanted_. The wanting was unusual, something that he had never allowed himself. It had always seemed to cause far more trouble than it was worth. But the wanting itself was rather delicious too, in its own way, which he hadn’t known.

Angelic sex had always seemed too vulnerable, and human sex too messy. But now he found himself wanting the vulnerability and the messiness. He didn’t want Crowley despite these things. He wanted Crowley _with_ them. That was also unexpected.

On the bus from Tadfield, Crowley had reached up and taken his hand. They had held hands all the way back to London, and the Chiltern Hills and Notting Hill and, yes, even Shepherd’s Bush had never looked so beautiful as when Crowley had been holding his hand, in plain sight of anyone who cared to look.

So he placed his hand on the table between them. “I just realised, I’ve been wittering on about what happened in Hell, but you haven’t told me what happened Upstairs.” Because, based on the night before, Crowley’s touch would make the lights of the Ritz all the more dazzling, the champagne all the more delicious, the raspberry tisane richer, the chocolates sweeter.

Crowley didn’t take it.

It was like being doused in cold water, and every old insecurity, every old doubt, came flooding back. He hadn’t realised the risk when he had reached out his hand until he was suddenly met with the rejection of it.

Had he misread the situation? Was hand-holding something acceptable in extreme situations like impending annihilation, but not for safe, pleasant moments? Last night Crowley had held his hand on an empty bus, but this was a table at the Ritz. This was entirely different. He didn’t know which was worse: that Crowley didn’t want to be seen touching his hand, or that Crowley didn’t want to touch him.

Crowley shrugged. “Not much. Said you were guilty of treason. Gabriel wasn’t having any chat about the greater good. He was gloating a bit.” The corner of Crowley’s mouth quirked up. “Wasn’t when I stepped out of the fire again, though.”

Aziraphale, hand and face burning, reached out with the offending limb and poured the raspberry tea. “I can imagine! But gloating at all… very disappointing.” He suddenly felt utterly exhausted. He wasn’t one for sleep, but even if he could just lie down on the sofa in the bookshop with a warm flannel on his forehead… He felt cold, despite the August heat.

“I thought so too. Whoever would have thought an _angel_ could be a dickhead?”

Aziraphale gave him a _look_, but he was smiling. “Just _Gabriel_, surely. Pick out which chocolates you fancy, my dear.”

“It’s fine, I’m full, you go ahead.”

Aziraphale picked out a Venetian truffle and nibbled, to give himself time to think more than anything. He had to be sensible. He had to be reasonable. But nothing about the last week had been sensible or reasonable. Last night he had thought he was going to die. This morning he had been knocked about the head with a crowbar and put on trial in Hell. And his own side – his _old side_, he sharply corrected himself – had tried to burn him. And now Crowley didn’t want to hold his hand.

He put the chocolate down. He felt very vulnerable. He felt very aware that _our own side_ was the only thing he had to rely on. “I have no idea what we do now,” he admitted.

“Whatever we want.” It was difficult to tell sometimes, when Crowley wore his sunglasses, but Aziraphale thought he could detect a hint of concern.

“That’s just it. I don’t know what I want.”

Crowley lounged rather more aggressively than before. “Well, as the professional tempter… What do you _not_ want?”

That was easier. Easier than admitting that the only thing he knew he wanted was _Crowley_, but that he had no idea what to do with that wanting. “I don’t want us to be separated.”

Crowley exhaled. “Well, that I can manage.” The tightness in Aziraphale’s chest loosened a little, and he was able to drop his shoulders again. Crowley had no script for this either, he reminded himself, but the old patterns would help them to navigate. “Let’s go back to the bookshop. We only need to plan one step in advance. The rest can wait.”

“Yes…” That was a big enough step, he supposed. Aziraphale kept thinking of the bookshop – the memory that Crowley had said it had burnt down, the memory that Crowley had said it was fine. The memory of his body exploding in it. He felt dizzy with them all. “Yes. And then we can get really, really drunk.”

*

Aziraphale seemed about as excited as Crowley felt to go back to the bookshop, but it would have to be confronted eventually. London was packed to the gills with people enjoying the hot afternoon and Crowley couldn’t cope with them at all. Not when he’d had to watch Aziraphale taken out with a crowbar that morning. He’d be looking for Hastur’s face everywhere.

They took a taxi instead.

It brought them to Crowley's flat, so that he could see the Bentley for himself. He stroked her bonnet lovingly. "Brilliant old girl..." he crooned. "Just brilliant. Didn't you do well?"

"You looked quite marvellous arriving in her at the airbase, it must be said. Like Helios' chariot." 

Crowley threw him a grateful look, and opened the door. "Your turn, angel."

Back on Greek Street, Aziraphale stood in the road, just like Crowley had that morning. “It looks just the same.”

“Yeah, like I said.” Crowley tried to shove his hands into his pockets, and, failing that, latched his thumbs in them instead. “You promised wine.”

Aziraphale unlocked the door. “It looks a bit cleaner, even…”

It was like the fire had been some horrible nightmare. Maybe it would be better if he thought of it that way. He walked straight through to the kitchenette in the back room; he hadn’t got that far yesterday. He hadn’t seen that burning. He picked out the dustiest of Aziraphale’s bottles while the angel ran to and fro to check on this book or that. “Have you seen the _Just William_s yet?”

“What? Oh, yes, here they are. Excellent condition too… Was he hinting that I should read them, do you think?”

Crowley shrugged and set out the glasses. The adrenaline was wearing off, and he felt dog-tired and on-edge. He wondered how long that would last.

At least he didn’t have to go through it alone, though.

God, how many times had he almost lost Aziraphale in the last forty-eight hours?

He passed a shaking hand over his face, and poured the wine. He wanted to sleep for a century, but only if Aziraphale stayed with him throughout. Crowley had worn that body and he'd never felt so warm in his whole existence.

Aziraphale had been in danger of falling back into his old fretfulness in the restaurant, but he’d admitted to Crowley that he did not want them to be separated.

That thought made him relax a little again. For Aziraphale to be able to voice that at all – that was a step. That wasn't insignificant. Especially when set against those words that tickled the inside of Crowley's skull: _We’re not friends. I don’t even like you._

Aziraphale hadn’t even said that he didn’t want to be alone. He had said that he didn’t want to be separated. It wasn’t just any company he wanted, it was _Crowley’s_.

Aziraphale sat down at the table with him, and he looked as grey and tired as Crowley felt; Crowley couldn’t bear it, and before he could think himself out of his courage he reached across the table and grabbed Aziraphale’s hand.

The angel _beamed_ at him. The whole bloody room was lit up by it. Thinking was so dumb, Crowley thought. Thinking hadn’t helped either of them. After this, he swore, Aziraphale could set the pace. Crowley would just… hold his hand.

They had worn each other’s bodies, and their physical flesh was no longer the barrier it had been. Crowley felt Aziraphale’s genuine joy at his touch, and he realised that Aziraphale would be able to feel his relief. He withstood the instinct to withdraw and hide, and just… let Aziraphale feel it.

“What do _you_ want?” Aziraphale asked him quietly.

“Me?” Crowley nearly did pull his hand back then. “Doesn’t matter.”

“It does. It does to me.” Crowley felt something mournful from Aziraphale, a purple-tinged regret. “I’ve not considered it as much as I should have. I was so worried about your safety that what you _wanted_ felt secondary.”

Crowley’s mouth felt dry. His throat closed up. “Ngh. I mean. I’m the one who deals with _wants_. You’re the guardian. Instinct is to guard. Makes sense.”

“Still. Now that we’re on our own side… What do you want?” Aziraphale’s smile was shy.

“_Shit_, angel.” He squeezed Aziraphale’s hand so tightly he felt the bones move. “I want to stay with you.”

“Well, that I can manage,” Aziraphale said, mirroring his words from the Ritz. The angel stood up, not letting go of his hand, and made to walk around the table.

Then lightning struck the bookshop.

Aziraphale’s guardian instincts were obviously still sharp, because he instantly turned his back on Crowley and threw his arms out to shield him. Crowley was frozen to the spot, a single thought screaming through his head: _firefirefirefirefirefirefire-_

But there was no fire. The electricity crackled through the air, and vanished.

And in the centre of the bookshop stood the Archangel Gabriel.

He was wearing the suit and lavender tie that he’d worn that morning, but now the tie was askew. Gabriel’s hair was mussed. He looked up through the oculus, and then down, right at Aziraphale.

Crowley stood up behind him.

“Gabriel. It’s considered rude to drop in without an invitation,” Aziraphale said, in a voice which sent customers running. “Kindly leave.”

Gabriel gave Crowley a look of special loathing. A muscle was jumping in his jaw. “Nothing would give me greater pleasure. But.”

Aziraphale was vibrating, with fear or anger or a potent mixture of the two. Crowley fisted his hand in the back of Aziraphale’s jacket. “But what?”

Gabriel bit his lip, and clenched his jaw. “I’ve been sent down.”

“By who?”

“Who do you think?” Gabriel snapped at Crowley. “I’ve been set outside the Curtain.”

Aziraphale gasped. Gabriel had been set outside the Curtain once before, 2500 years ago, for three weeks. “For- for not following orders?”

Gabriel glared at him. “For… the unfortunate recent events.”

Crowley barked in laughter. He wanted to scream. “Oh, shit!”

“For once we’re in agreement,” Gabriel said icily.

“Agreeing with a demon. Whatever next.” Aziraphale was still firmly keeping his arms out to keep Crowley back. Only Crowley could feel how he shook.

He couldn’t comprehend it. Six thousand years of doubt and anxiety and fretting, and here was the Archangel Gabriel telling them that God gave a damn about Aziraphale after all. Enough to break silence. Enough to punish Her favoured messenger.

It was too good to be true.

“So She’s sent me down here to ‘learn some empathy’,” Gabriel said, with air quotes. Aha, Crowley thought, there was the sting. Marvellous. Perfect. It was strangely reassuring.

“Well, you can go and do that elsewhere,” Crowley said. “Bye now.”

Gabriel ignored him. “Aziraphale. I. Urgh. She’s blocked me from my power. I don’t know anyone else down here.”

“Not our problem,” said Crowley.

“We’re trying to talk, demon!” Gabriel said, and that made Aziraphale straighten up.

“You’ll be polite to my friend in my shop, Gabriel.”

“Right. Okay. Sorry.” Aziraphale stiffened, and Crowley felt afraid himself.

“So,” Aziraphale said carefully. “She didn’t approve, of what you did this morning?”

Gabriel rolled his eyes and leant his head back. “No. Look. I like this as little as you do. I’ll stay until we can find out whatever lesson I’m meant to learn, and then I can shoot right back up.”

“We’re not going to help you!” Crowley said. “Seriously? You tried to kill him!”

“That was _hours_ ago!” Gabriel said. He looked at Aziraphale. “I’m… urgh, I’m sorry, all right? You did some things, I did some things. No one got hurt though!”

“Don’t care,” said Crowley. “Right, Aziraphale?”

Aziraphale was silent. If his arms hadn’t been out to shield Crowley, he’d have been wringing his hands, Crowley knew. “Aziraphale!”

Gabriel seized his chance. “She sent me here. I didn’t even know where I was going to go. I’m _asking_ you for –“

“_No_,” Crowley said, pointing his finger.

“– hospitality.”

Aziraphale breathed out, and Crowley grabbed him by his coat. “Stay right there!” he snarled at Gabriel, and pulled the angel through to the kitchenette. “Do _not_ let him play you.”

“What if he’s not playing?” Aziraphale whispered back. He was going to _town_ on the hem of his waistcoat. “He’s asked for hospitality.”

“We’re not in Israel anymore, we’re not in Greece, we’re not in Persia,” Crowley said. “In England, you can tell people to fuck off. It’s not the desert. He’s not going to die.”

“He might! If any demons find out he’s here, powerless-“

“Good. I’ll tell them myself, let them all go nuts.”

“I have to forgive him, Crowley! I’m morally obligated.”

“No! Fuck no!” Crowley’s face was twisted in rage. “He tried _to kill you_.”

“Like I tried to kill Adam. Yesterday. An innocent child.”

Crowley looked at him in astonishment. He wanted to tear his own hair out. “That was different! That was to save the world!”

“So? It’s still a death. I have to forgive Gabriel, or I can’t be forgiven for trying to kill Adam.”

“Forgiven – by who? By God? Who decided to send Her fucking psychopath here to mess up our lives again?” He gave a rare blink, and stared out of the doorway. He could see Gabriel’s grey-clad arm. He asked, slowly, “What about Ya’el?”

Aziraphale looked every day of his 6,000 years. “What about Ya’el?”

“What if God sent him here so that we can…” He mimed bringing a hammer down, and raised his eyebrows.

“No! That was a one-off! It was a very particular situation!”

“Yeah, and so’s this!”

“That was to save Israel.”

“It was to save herself! Jabin had already defeated him!”

“Sisera was not an Archangel of the Presence! Speaking of which, hospitality to wayfarers is greater than welcoming the Shekhinah.”

“He’s not a wayfarer. He’s a- he’s a bastard, that’s what he is. He’s our enemy.”

“Which further obligates me! You know that. ‘Now go and do the same.’”

Crowley threw up his hands in frustration. “Then send him off to a hotel like the Samaritan did! Tell you what, I’ll _pay_!”

Aziraphale pulled Crowley even deeper into the back room. His voice was slower than usual. “He doesn’t have any powers. And he’s… well, when it comes to Earth matters he’s a fool. Ignorant and thoughtless. God only knows how much trouble he’d get himself into. But _think_, my dear. If I can show him something of how wonderful Earth can be, he’ll go back, and tell the others. If he can learn to empathise with humans, to see them as God’s creations in the same way that angels are, maybe he’ll understand why we did what we did. Even if he’s just _reluctant_ when the next one comes, mightn’t that be a real ace up our sleeve? Maybe that’s why God has sent him down _here_ as opposed to just keeping him outside the Curtain like last time he annoyed Her.”

“Aziraphale. Just because you’re an angel, it doesn’t mean you have to be a fool. He can’t be trusted.”

“I know he can’t. Crowley, you spent an hour with him. I have spent millennia. Believe me when I tell you, I know how… how dangerous he can be. But even if I don’t trust him, I can’t disobey an order from Her.”

Crowley felt as though Aziraphale had reached into his chest and was trying to pull his heart out. “Our side, angel. Not Hers.”

“Our side. You and me, and however many humans we can help when the time comes,” Aziraphale replied. “And if anyone did want to try anything again, well… A powerless archangel is a handy hostage to have.”

There he was. There was his bastard. Crowley hissed out a breath, and took Aziraphale’s hand. “Fine. Friends close and enemies closer.”

“I’m sorry.” He could feel it through Aziraphale’s hand: the grief and the fear and the weariness.

“Not your fault.” He kept his own emotions tightly in hand. Because if this really was God moving in mysterious ways Her bullshit to perform, maybe he could summon hellfire himself. Gabriel had asked for _Aziraphale’s_ hospitality, and not his; Aziraphale was honour-bound to protect Gabriel, unless Gabriel broke certain rules. Or until he left.

He’d find a way. There’d be some opening, and he’d be there to exploit it. Aziraphale would forgive him eventually.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The story of Gabriel being set outside the Curtain comes from the Talmud, Yoma 77a.


	3. Chapter 3

Aziraphale led Crowley back out onto the shop floor. Freedom had been dizzying, overwhelming; now they were once again going to be in danger, on guard, working towards a purpose. It was almost comforting, the familiarity of it. Aziraphale was no stranger to dread. Dread, he knew how to cope with.

Not everything was the same, however. He took Crowley’s hand, and felt his surprise. “We’ve come to a decision. We’ll help you.”

Gabriel had been staring at their hands with a murderous expression on his face. He looked back up at Aziraphale, and grinned. It was really quite a horrible sight, the cold eyes and wide smile. “Aziraphale. Buddy. I knew I could count on you.”

“There are some rules,” Aziraphale said. He clenched Crowley’s hand. “You have to be respectful to Crowley.”

“Really? You want me to play nice with your demon boyfriend?”

“I’m more than happy to play nasty,” Crowley said, and tasted the air with his forked tongue.

Aziraphale’s face was already burning. “My dear. The door is right there, Gabriel.”

“Urgh. Fine.” Gabriel grimaced.

“Right.” He hadn’t thought much further than that, and was coming up blank. He looked at Crowley.

Crowley rolled his eyes. “_Don’t try to kill us_,” he said. He let go of Aziraphale’s hand to count this off on his finger. “Now or ever. You can tell your friends up there too. If you want to be treated as a guest, that means you have duties too. Nothing to hurt either of us, ever.”

“Sounds fair.”

“Are you human?” Aziraphale suddenly asked. “Will you need to eat or sleep or anything?”

Gabriel looked like he hadn’t considered this horrible possibility. “No. I don’t think so. God, I hope not. I don’t want to look like...”

Aziraphale swallowed his hurt. It was his fault, really, after all. How had they come from tea at the Ritz to this? “I suppose we’ll find out soon enough."

"So, just impotent then?" said Crowley.

God, Aziraphale loved him. He should have said it in the Restaurant. Before all this. But even so, he felt a little strength return. God had punished Gabriel, and Crowley was still with him. "So. Formally. I forgive you, for trying to kill me.”

“Right. Thanks.”

The silence lengthened, and Aziraphale cleared his throat.

“He can’t forgive you, because you did nothing wrong,” Crowley said silkily.

“Hey, no,” Gabriel said. “Look, I can’t formally forgive your treason against Heaven, okay? It’s not just up to me.”

“God was obviously pissed off enough at you in particular to make you slum it down here with us,” Crowley said.

“I’ll tell you what.” Gabriel spread out his hands placatingly. “I’ll forgive Aziraphale for his _personal_ betrayal. Yeah? Six thousand years of lies. I’ll forgive you for that.”

“It’s only been the last… It doesn’t matter.” It obviously didn’t to Heaven. Five thousand years of lonely toiling… “I suppose it’s better than nothing. I don't really know what I expected,” Aziraphale said. Absolutely typical of Gabriel, really. He pulled his watch out of his pocket. Getting on to seven. “Right, come through, sit down. I suppose we all have the same goal, which is for you to leave as soon as possible. We can devise a plan.”

This made Gabriel look happier at least. Gabriel liked meetings. He liked brainstorming and agenda and presentations.

Crowley did not look happy. “I’ll make some tea,” he said, and Aziraphale heard the unspoken distinction. No alcohol for them now. They were going to have to be always on their guard.

Aziraphale already felt exhausted.

*

Gabriel had known it’d be bad, but this? Aziraphale made him tell them over and over again what God had said. “Just that I messed up. Had to learn why what I did was wrong.”

Aziraphale was writing, a little pad of paper and a little pen. What century was he in? Michael had kitted them all out with smartphones years ago. “Armageddon, or… you know. This morning?”

“Beats me. You know She doesn’t like explaining Herself.” Gabriel’s eyes kept drifting to the demon Crowley. Those sunglasses would normally make it difficult to tell, but Gabriel knew that the demon’s eyes were fixed solely on him.

“We could try to cover both,” Aziraphale said. “Without knowing what Her criteria for success are, we’ll have to go broad at first. General metanoia.”

That rankled. Gabriel exhaled through his nose. Nasty human behaviour, that. Not a habit he wanted to fall into. “I don’t need a metanoia.”

“I think in the absence of anything more concrete, a metanoia would be the most likely option. So. Changing your mind. It's honestly not so bad when you get used to it; changing your mind proves that you have one, and all that. Let’s work under the assumption that She wants you to change your mind about humanity. Let’s start there.”

“If it’s a metanoia She wants, we should have a clear image of what the current noia is,” the demon said. Gabriel _looked_ at him, and the demon smiled back, showing his fangs.

Disgusting. It was _disgusting_ that Aziraphale could bear to touch him.

“Right, yes. Current state of mind.” Aziraphale tore off a sheet from his pad and started on a new one. “Current attitude towards humanity.” He looked up expectantly.

“They’re humans,” Gabriel said, and shrugged. Said everything you needed to, really. But if this was the game he had to play… “Mortal. Die very quickly. Billions of them. … smelly. Weak. Very stupid, though they can make some nice things, I suppose.”

“Yes – clothes, you said…” Aziraphale made a note of this, and circled it. “You buy them, don’t you? They’re not conjured?”

“No, they’re the real thing.”

“Why?” asked the demon.

“Why what?” Gabriel tried to rein in his patience, but it was _so hard_. “Aziraphale, does he have to be here?”

“Yes,” Aziraphale said. “And you have to be respectful, Gabriel. As we agreed. Because if one of you has to leave, it'll not be him.”

The demon smiled smugly. “So. Why? Why buy physical clothes, instead of conjuring them?”

Gabriel could hardly bear not being able to kill him. He shrugged. “They fit better. The humans can do all the measurements.”

“They can look from the outside. Look with an objective eye. Accurate.” Crowley said. Aziraphale looked at him, and something passed in the glance between them.

“What?” Gabriel leant forward. “What was that?”

“Nothing,” Aziraphale answered, but quickly started to write something.

“What’s _that_?”

“Just shorthand.” The demon looked over at the pad and snickered; then, _then_ the wretched creature looked over his sunglasses so that Gabriel could see him looking across.

It took gargantuan willpower to remain sitting, instead of reaching out and throttling the serpent with his bare hands. _No powers_, Gabriel reminded himself. He had to play the game. Let Aziraphale write his stupid little notes if it got him back sooner. The sooner he could dispense with his charade of friendliness.

Why was the detail about tailoring so important? What did they read in that which he couldn’t?

Couple of weird anthropophiles. Gross. It was a _good_ thing that he didn’t understand. It proved that he remained uncorrupted by Earth.

Aziraphale was still scribbling away. “I think our first priority should be increasing your empathy for humans, but also an appreciation for humanity _as a whole_. Individual humans dying is a different thing entirely to _all humans dying at once_. I think that that’s an important distinction.”

“Right. Humans are dying all the time. All got to at some point,” Gabriel said.

“Yes, but, if they all die – or, more accurately, _are all killed_ – at the same time, like yesterday would probably have done, then the species no longer continues. Mortals understand that their personal time on Earth is limited, but the species as a whole must continue.”

“Must it? They’re not exactly doing a good job of it at the moment, are they?”

“But that’s not all humans. This is one of the great facets of humanity; the potential for greatness, for good or for wickedness.”

Gabriel raised an eyebrow. “I don’t think we should be celebrating potential wickedness, Aziraphale. Just because you have a vested interest in excusing weaknesses.”

Gabriel watched that one land, but Aziraphale didn't look up from his paper. “Of course we must. Look at so many of the saints. Choosing good is all the greater if the temptation of evil is also great.”

“Heaven should give me a retainer,” said the demon Crowley.

Aziraphale gave a look that was unmistakably fond. Gabriel saw red as he poured the tea for himself and for the demon. “Anyway, I think we can begin to write up a list of human accomplishments. Ways in which they have made existence richer and more beautiful. There’s so much _music_, Gabriel, and churches and temples, and _gardens_, and poetry! I _do _understand that you must have seen Crowley and I as… well, becoming very upset over an ant-hill that was going to be destroyed by a cricket match, or something-“

“A what?”

“Angel, doesn’t matter,” said Crowley. “We know what they think. Earth’s just the chessboard. We’re a couple of pawns that have gone rogue.”

“Right!” Gabriel said, and pointed at the demon. “One of you is talking sense. I don’t know _why_ I expected it to be Aziraphale, but there you go.”

Aziraphale gave him a little smile. His fat face was a little pinker. _Good_, Gabriel thought. “This is a complete waste of time. I’m as useless as you are down here! Whatever this is about, it’s not going to be a metanoia. I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“You tried to burn a fellow angel alive,” said the demon.

“As opposed to burning him dead?”

“No trial. No mercy. He told me all about it.”

“Well, he would. Can’t seem to stop blabbing to every demon he sees.”

“Unlike Michael, coming down with their little jug. How did you get that hellfire again, Gabe?”

Gabriel surged to his feet, because no, _fuck this demon_.

Aziraphale stood too, and put his hand out. It hovered an inch in front of Gabriel’s chest. It was shaking. Aziraphale had always been a coward. Easily stressed. He bent under pressure like a reed in the wind.

How _had_ he survived the hellfire?

“Please!” said Aziraphale. “Please. None of us enjoy this. None of us- none of us want to be here.”

The demon was staring at him again, from behind those damn glasses. He got up abruptly, and went out into the main room of the shop. Aziraphale’s gaze followed him anxiously, and it was quite nauseating.

“I have no idea what you see in him,” Gabriel said. “How you can bear to touch him.”

Aziraphale lifted his chin. “He’s brilliant. I’ve always said it. He’s clever, and brave, and funny.” And then the little sod looked him straight in the eye. “I admire him more than any creature I’ve ever met. It’s an honour, to touch him, and to be touched.”

Gabriel had never eaten. He had no idea what bile was. But his veins were suddenly full of acid, and his skin had been sprinkled with lye. Aziraphale had even specified ‘creature’, so he couldn’t denounce him for idolatry. Clever, clever, clever. “I suppose I really should be surprised at _him_ being able to bear _you_.”

The demon returned, carrying a large, glossy book. “Knew you had something like this in here.” He dropped it onto the table in between them with an enormous, reverberating bang. _The Annunciation in Art. _Crowley loomed over him, staring down. “You don’t love them, whatever. Or you ‘love’ them but you don’t give a toss whether they all die. But they love you.”

Gabriel turned the book around. He was intrigued enough that he could ignore the look of idiot love that idiotic Aziraphale was beaming up at the demon.

He opened it. Little pictures, blunt and badly drawn, or faded until you could barely tell who was announcing to whom. “Is this supposed to impress me? To move me?”

Aziraphale reached across the table and flicked a few pages past him.

“Wait, wait,” Gabriel said, and peered.

Oh, this one was different! This was an image of a high room, and had Mary in a rich blue gown – not realistic, not what it had been like at all. But… the other figure had to be him. He was portrayed as much more beautiful than Mary. Ringlets like sea silk, a beaming smile. He was wearing a cloak of crimson and gold brocade, fastened with an enormous jewelled brooch. On his head was a crown of rubies and sapphires; there were pearls everywhere. And his wings were every colour of the rainbow, peacock feathers to symbolise his eyes.

“That’s Van Eyck,” Aziraphale said softly, while Gabriel took these details in. “His attention to detail is nonpareil, really. Especially when it comes to clothes.”

The demon Crowley sniggered again, and Gabriel glared at him. But he turned the page. “They do seem to like the subject…”

“Oh, they do. Absolutely. In this country all the children dress up and act it out at Christmas time. Hopefully you’ll be back Upstairs long before then… Statues. Paintings. Films, like _The Sound of Music._”

“Literature, too,” said the demon. “’Gabriel, thou hadst in Heav’n th’esteem of wise…’”

“Mm, yes. ‘Not man’s nor woman’s was the immortal grace Rounding the limbs beneath that robe of white, And lighting the proud eyes with changeless light…’”

Again that stupid look between them. They had the gall to smile at each other, and Gabriel knew that it was at his expense.

He would make them regret it.

*

Aziraphale was flagging; Crowley topped up his cup with tea, and gently squeezed his shoulder. The look of gratitude that the angel gave him was heart-stopping.

He had heard the way Gabriel spoke to Aziraphale. He had heard Gabriel ask how Aziraphale could bear to touch him, while he rooted out the art book, and Aziraphale had said that there was no creature he admired more.

Those words had cracked him open and healed something in him. He felt a star born in his chest.

But those words also made him fear.

Gabriel was focused on the Edward Frampton Annunciation, probably because its Gabriel also wore dove grey and violet. Aziraphale, despite his glittering vein of bastardry, wasn’t as good at recognising a true narcissist as Crowley was.

Hell was full of them, of course. And Crowley had had plenty of time to discern it in human behaviour. Gabriel ticked all the boxes: the intense need for admiration, the constant belittling, bullying little comments, distorted self-perception (which explained why he couldn’t conjure his own clothes; Crowley, who had a far better understanding of himself, could conjure clothes which fit like a latex glove), entitlement, grandiosity… He was now being relatively friendly again, all broad smiles that didn’t reach his eyes, because he needed Aziraphale’s help. But as soon as his powers came back, he’d kill them both.

Aziraphale thought that they could appeal to Gabriel’s better nature. Crowley doubted it existed. He’d always been rather dismissive of Aziraphale’s complaints about Gabriel – “You don’t want Gabriel upset with you, Gabriel gave me a bit of a dressing down earlier, Gabriel won’t like that at all” – and had assumed it was just Aziraphale being his usual fretful self. Worrying that Gabriel would bring out the classic “I’m not angry, just disappointed.”

He’d forgotten Aziraphale’s demotion. He’d forgotten _the Rebellion_. He’d bought the propaganda in that blessed Annunciation book, all the stupid pictures of pretty angels in pretty dresses.

No, that wasn’t the reason at all. It was because he’d only properly spoken to one angel in six thousand years. And with the spans of time lengthening between one angelic atrocity and the next, the mind forgot. Nostalgia spread her sneaky little fingers over everything. Aziraphale’s loyalty to Heaven, and the way Hell treated him like a piece of shit on someone’s shoe, or a pot-plant with shrivelled leaves, they’d been his blinkers.

You can’t psychoanalyse angels and demons in the same way you can humans. They are immortal beings of vast and unfathomable power who existed before time and were called into existence by a God who deliberately gave them their purpose and rank. But Crowley knew that if Gabriel had been a human, any attempt to teach him empathy would have been doomed to failure.

So he would let Aziraphale get on with the busywork of making Gabriel listen to music or take up watercolours or read improving literature or cuddle bunny rabbits or whatever he thought might make him a bit softer. Crowley knew none of that shit would do a thing. Even appealing to his egotism would only buy them a little bit of time.

No, he needed Aziraphale to keep Gabriel busy. And when he was able to leave them for an hour, he was going to go and check whether or not he could still summon hellfire.


	4. Chapter 4

It would have been hilarious, if it hadn’t been terrifying and oddly heart-breaking, watching Aziraphale try to explain to Gabriel why genocide was bad.

For seven hours.

When the two angels had got too heated and walked off to separate parts of the bookshop to cool down Crowley ordered a Deliveroo from the Chinese restaurant down the road that Aziraphale liked. Then he went to the back room to where Aziraphale had fled. “Hey.”

“This is impossible. Impossible!” Aziraphale said, scrubbing exhaustedly at his face. “Right, new strategy: we’ll set out the differences between _mass murder_ and _genocide_. Genocide is systematic and deliberate destruction, while the Armageddon situation is more about _collateral damage_-“

“Angel. Hey.” Crowley quirked a smile at him. “A change of definition isn’t going to help him. It’s like watching you very earnestly arguing about Kant’s categorical imperative with a horse.”

This cracked Aziraphale like a walnut, and he laughed. Crowley grinned. “A really, really stupid horse. Or an iguana.”

Aziraphale looked at him so gratefully. “Are iguanas particularly stupid?”

“Speaking as a snake, very much so. Though I _am_ very intelligent.”

“You are. But in comparison, and only when you’re a snake.” Aziraphale extended his hand, just a little, and got that awful look on his face again. Unsure and tired.

Crowley remembered all the nasty little things Gabriel had said to Aziraphale, and that word which Aziraphale had used in return. Honoured. _Honoured_. He took Aziraphale’s hand, palm to palm, fingers wrapped around the base of Aziraphale’s thumb. With his fingertip he rubbed Aziraphale’s knuckle.

Aziraphale stretched his fingers, and then relaxed. His fingers curled around Crowley’s hand.

“I’ve ordered us some Chinese. You’ll feel better once you’ve eaten. And I can rub his face in it.”

“There’s one open? It’s 2 in the morning.”

“London, baby.” He grimaced. “Sorry.”

“Baby?” Aziraphale was _smiling_ at him, the blessed idiot. Blessed, beloved idiot.

“It’s a quote. It’s a… doesn’t matter. Come on. I’ll pour us a brandy. One drink won’t hurt, and we both need the analgesic.”

*

Crowley had been right. Two fingers’ worth of brandy, sticky rice, and a spicy fish curry did a lot to restore Aziraphale’s inner equilibrium.

At first he’d barely been able to manage a bite. Gabriel sitting across the table, staring at him with disdainful contempt, reminding him that _angels_ didn’t need to eat, made his throat close up.

That’s where the brandy helped. That was easier, softer, and he was able to swallow it. Crowley had waited for him to drink it and was now eating with gusto.

“Do you want to taste?” Crowley asked Gabriel. “If you _do_ need to eat, this is very good.”

Oh, it would be delicious if Gabriel really did need to eat… Aziraphale tried a small mouthful of rice. They were all right, he reminded himself. Crowley was there. Gabriel was powerless. “How’s your beef?” he asked Crowley.

“Delicious. Absolutely swimming in garlic. Here –“ Crowley picked out a morsel with his chopsticks and held it out.

Aziraphale knew that passing food from one pair of chopsticks to another was rude. Crowley didn’t care. But Crowley wasn’t holding out his chopsticks across the table. He was holding them up, for Aziraphale to eat from.

Aziraphale’s treacherous human heart was fast and loud in his ears. Crowley was so carefully casual that Aziraphale could do nothing other than indulge; his lips lingered for a second on the points, and Crowley’s ears were as red as his hair.

“You two are _so disgusting_.”

Aziraphale smiled, and covered his mouth with his hand as he chewed. “You’re right. _Crowley. _The beef is delicious.”

Crowley grinned at him. “Told you. Hate it when they stint on the garlic.”

“Or the spices. Speaking of which, the fish is marvellous – here.” Aziraphale held out a piece on his own chopsticks.

“Oh, _for God’s sake_,” Gabriel said, crossing his arms and looking stubbornly at the oculus.

“You’ll only encourage him if you make such a fuss, Gabriel,” Aziraphale said.

Gabriel looked back at him. “You are _both_ the most depraved, deviant, perverted freaks I have ever laid my eyes on.”

Crowley groaned. “Oh, don’t stop, I’m almost there.”

Aziraphale burst out laughing. “Crowley! Eat your beef. Unless you prefer the fish?”

“The fish is really good, I’ll go halfsies with you. It’s amazing, actually, humans have learnt how to do this thing to a fish called _cooking it_-“

“Philistine,” Aziraphale said, pouring some of the fish curry onto Crowley’s plate. “Gabriel, if you did want to try some food, I’d recommend starting with the rice.”

“I dislike you _intensely_.”

“A fact that you made abundantly clear when you tried to kill me,” agreed Aziraphale. “My dear, are you going to finish that rice?”

*

Aziraphale wasn’t much one for sleep. He might drop off for a couple of hours once or twice a year, after some drinking if he didn’t sober himself up in time, or a particularly trying day in which the number of customers in the shop exceeded single digits. He confessed that he had once pretended to fall asleep at his desk to dissuade one obnoxious man from buying an Evelyn Waugh first edition and woke up the next morning.

Instead of sleep, Aziraphale needed solitude. The more stress he was under, the more he retreated. Crowley was very touched by the degree to which he was tolerated. Aziraphale could read and potter while Crowley had a nap of his own, or worked out his next demonic scheme. But even Crowley was eventually given a gentle little hint, and away he went. Aziraphale could quite happily sit for a hundred years in a beehive cell on a rock in the middle of the Atlantic (and had, the mean bastard, when he _knew_ that Crowley couldn’t go to Ireland).

So when dawn broke, and Aziraphale was asleep at the table with his head pillowed in his hands, Crowley was worried. It seemed that when solitude wasn’t an option, Aziraphale’s body had decided on the matter for him.

Gabriel was predictably disturbed. “You two really have gone native, haven’t you?”

“That’s what Lord Beelzebub thinks,” Crowley said. “Come through here.”

He was surprised by the ease with which Gabriel obeyed. Maybe he’d been worn down as well. “Why?”

“Don’t want to disturb him with our talking. I assumed you wouldn’t shut up, so.”

Gabriel looked back into the back room. “So… someone can hear, when they're asleep?”

“Sort of. Certain noises will wake certain people up. Loud noises. Women tend to be woken by higher pitched sounds, men by lower. The degree to which the brain remembers what’s said when you’re asleep is, nyeh.” Crowley waved his hand. “Dunno. One of the reasons why humans band together. So someone can watch your back while you sleep.” He gave a snakey grin. “In case something dark and dangerous creeps up on you.”

“What if _I_ fall asleep? What happens?”

“Ah, so that’s why you want to know. Sometimes it’s just black. You wake up and however long’s gone past. Or you might dream. I hope you have really, really shitty nightmares.”

Gabriel looked unimpressed. “I doubt it. I’m not as… _cowardly_ as you or Aziraphale.”

“Really? Because from what I heard, _he_ walked into a pillar of hellfire, while _you_ jumped back like a startled pigeon when he breathed a little at you.”

Gabriel raised an eyebrow. “That’s what he said to you?”

Crowley nodded.

Gabriel snorted, and shook his head. “Absolutely typical. He _begged_. Just like when we demoted him. Crying, shaking, the whole she-bang. As soon as he saw the hellfire, bam-“ Gabriel clicked his fingers. “’Just give me one more chance, I never meant to betray Heaven, the demon tempted me to do it!’ It was pathetic.”

Crowley had to cover his mouth. Gabriel apparently took it as shock. “Sorry to break it to you. You’ve picked a pretty shoddy angel to shack up with. Though maybe snakes like spinelessness?”

“Wow. I can’t believe he’d _lie_ to me like that,” said Crowley. “Just to make himself look better.”

“What he’s always done. Lied on all his reports. But then again… Here’s one thing I don’t understand. We’ve got surveillance on you two from 1601. Looked pretty cosy. But I overheard you in 1800. Yeah. He put you up to that, didn’t he?”

“Nope,” Crowley said, with a shrug.

“You wanted him around because you knew how useless he was. Didn’t you?”

“Sure. Made my life a lot easier.”

“I knew it. I _knew_ there was something up. The idea of _Aziraphale_ being that capable-“

“Capable of stopping your war though. Capable of walking through hellfire.” Crowley looked over his sunglasses. “He’s useless because you can’t use him anymore. It only matters if someone’s useless if they’re a tool, right? Like you. You’re a tool. Aziraphale’s not. So it doesn’t matter whether he’s useless or not.”

Gabriel’s hands were clenched in fists. There was a real wildness in his eyes.

Crowley told himself to dial it back. He didn’t have the hellfire yet. As incredibly cathartic as it was to speak to Gabriel like this, if he _was_ going to bait Gabriel into punching him he wanted Aziraphale awake to witness the breaking of xenia for himself.

So he gave Gabriel a bright smile. “I’d better wake him up. It’s a whole new day!”

*

Aziraphale felt someone touch his shoulder; he shot up, nearly headbutting Crowley in the face. “What-?” There was drool on his chin. He wiped it away and looked up at Crowley. “God… Is it too much to hope it was a dream?”

“I’m afraid so. There’s tea and chocolate digestives there for you. Not the best substitute for a Gabriel-free shop.”

“But appreciated…” Crowley looked as tired as he felt. He picked up the mug and the clean, nutty scent of the tea was comforting. “Did you want to sleep?”

“No. Not going to leave you alone with him. Except…” Crowley looked through the door to check that they were alone. “I need an hour, whenever you can give me one.”

“Why?”

“I’m returning the favour for the holy water. But I can’t summon hellfire here – too risky. It might surge to you as well. I might be able to manage it in half an hour, if you’ve got a free thermos handy.”

“I don’t think I do,” Aziraphale said. He felt sick. “I said I’d protect him, Crowley.”

“I know. Insurance, just like the holy water. If he behaves, we’ll behave. But better to be safe than sorry.”

Aziraphale felt… rotten. He felt tired, and as though he barely recognised himself anymore. But Crowley made sense. “Where would you go? To summon it?”

“Soho Square’s probably closest. It’ll take about fifteen minutes to summon it, I have to call it up from the Pit. Call it twenty, to mentally shove any humans out of range. They might have a thermos for sale on the corner. It needs to be metal, and airtight. I’ll be tired afterwards, but it’ll be fewer than five minutes back from the Square… Unless I drive. Where to buy the bloody thermos?”

Crowley wouldn’t want to conjure it, not if it was going to hold hellfire. “Does the metal matter?”

“Pure iron would be best, obviously, but I think the airtight thing is more important. So steel, if I can get something airtight…”

“So something like a tiffin box. Paint tin, even. Romany’s will do something like that, on Brewer Street.”

“Down Old Compton? It’ll be faster to walk there, up to the Square, and back. Five there, two in the shop, five to the square. Twenty there. Three back. Thirty-five minutes.”

“I’ll be all right, my dear,” said Aziraphale. “All he can do is make little comments about my weight or what a rubbish angel I am. It’s hardly high peril. If we get into another argument you can sneak out the back door and return before he even notices you’re missing, in all likelihood.”

Crowley snorted. “I could see him doing it. I can’t wait to tell you what he said while you were asleep.”

Aziraphale gave him a warm smile, and reached up to touch his hand. “Neither can I. We’ll have something nice to drink, some cake…”

“You’ll discorporate laughing.”

“I hope not!” Aziraphale heaved himself up. “I don’t much fancy my chances if I have to go and ask the Quartermaster for a new one.”

*

Aziraphale turned a piece of paper in the window, indicating that his shop was closed to customers.

Gabriel felt like a corpse: decomposing solid mass, and absolutely writhing with the maggots of anger and hatred.

It made it so much worse, that Aziraphale had _known_ that Gabriel was scared. That he had breathed out that hellfire in an attempt to scare him, and then he had gone back down and laughed about it with his disgusting demon boyfriend.

Soon. Once he could use his powers again, they’d be laughing on the other sides of their faces. Both of them.

Aziraphale was droning on, wearing utterly ridiculous little glasses that he couldn’t possibly need, with several _books_ around him. Gabriel didn’t like books. They smelt terrible.

There was a tinkling little noise from the alcove, and then a series of nine deep _bongs_. This apparently meant something to Aziraphale and the demon; they couldn’t help the little glance they shared.

“Time for a fresh pot. Would you go and put the kettle on, my dear?” Aziraphale asked, and then turned his notebook around. “So. We need to be _extremely_ clear on Heaven’s policy regarding collateral damage. Because if it’s all right for Heaven to do something but _not_ for humans, that’s hypocritical, do you see? And hypocrisy is wrong.”

Gabriel sighed in boredom. “Fuck, this is tedious. No. Because when Heaven does something, it’s Morally Right. Evil must be destroyed.”

Aziraphale was looking towards the kitchenette, but this brought him back with a pained noise. “No, you’re saying that _Hell_ must be destroyed, but even if that goal is a worthy one, you can’t do evil things to innocent people to ensure a good outcome.”

“Aziraphale, _of course you can_. If God wants you to do something, you do it! No questions, no complaints. Just following orders.”

“My God,” Aziraphale said, and leant back on his chair. “Ours but to do and die, I suppose?”

“Not that you had the decency to do that either. Besides, what was it you told Uriel? Good, bad, that’s for _them_.”

“But I was saying that we’re supposed to be providing choices for them! Support! Maybe, just maybe, they’re the important ones. Not us. We’re here to look after them. That’s why She made _them_ in Her image, not us.”

Gabriel heard the door click; he’d been listening for it. He sighed out, and closed his eyes. His suit straightened, and his hair was smoothed.

When he opened his eyes, Aziraphale was staring at him in astonishment. “Did you… Gabriel. Do you think…?”

Gabriel widened his eyes, and laughed. “You think… I’m having a metanoia? Oh, did you think I was _listening_? To you? To all this sob-story bullshit about poor little humans?”

He moved his fingers to freeze Aziraphale and muffle the entire world around them. No noise in or out. “I can’t believe you believed it. Both of you. You _genuinely _thought that God would punish _me_?”

Aziraphale was trying to move. Gabriel saw the terror in his eyes, terror that hadn’t been there in Heaven. Good. Whatever trick had saved them both last time, Aziraphale wasn’t so confident in it now, was he?

“God never said a thing. I came down here myself. The only thing you ever enjoyed more than sucking up to Her was being _merciful_ and _soft-hearted_. That's why you're friends with the demon. I knew I could rely on you wanting to be kind to a punished, Fallen thing. And you just lapped it up.”

He gripped the front of Aziraphale’s shirt, and thought of somewhere close, somewhere quiet. He didn’t want them to be disturbed.


	5. Chapter 5

All creatures react to threat in different ways. Humans tend to talk about fight-or-flight. Cats will arch their backs and make their fur stand on end. Oppossums will pretend to be dead. Rabbits freeze, or bolt.

Whenever Aziraphale had had to greet some humans with the full lightshow, they tended to freeze. A small proportion ran away screaming. A memorable handful had a fight response; Aziraphale only ever appeared to Mary’s husband in dreams after the first time because the man had one hell of a right hook.

If he felt genuinely threatened, Crowley was a fleer. When _humans_ wanted to start a fight Crowley tended to treat himself and let loose, and even against more dangerous enemies, when it came down to brass tacks, he was fast and cunning. But he was avoidant by nature, and preferred to run away from any trouble that he didn’t feel in control of.

Aziraphale’s weakness was that he tried to solve things. He tried to reason and cajole. Most of the time, this worked perfectly well, especially when he put a little angelic force behind the suggestion. But it had also led to his nearly being shot by Nazis, beheaded by guillotine, burnt in an auto-de-fé, beheaded by axe, burnt at the stake for heresy, burnt at the stake for witchcraft…

Etc.

And so as soon as Gabriel and he manifested in the forest, he pulled away and put his hands out. “Gabriel. There was really no need.” He tried to look very reasonable and unflustered, and doubted he did a very good job of either. They were deep enough in a forest that they could hear no human voices, and a car only on the very edge of hearing. The trees were close and thick, and the air smelt strongly of topsoil and decayed matter. The ground beneath his feet was spongy, covered with rotting leaves. “Where are we?”

“How should I know?” Gabriel looked ridiculously out of place, with his grey suit and lavender tie. He apparently had not been expecting this location either. “I just went somewhere with no humans around.”

Well, _that_ wasn’t ominous at all. “I think we’re still in London. Or close. I can feel it…” He could feel _Crowley_, his shock and his rage and his fear, like smoke on the horizon. Then he was wrenched back to reality by Gabriel slamming him against one of the vast old oak trees so hard that he saw stars. A hundred times harder than Uriel had done, and oh, a thousand times harder than Crowley-

Aziraphale brought up his hands between them, pushed gently on Gabriel’s chest. De-escalation. Begin a conversation. Keep him talking. He had read it in a book: _the evil like power, power over people, and they want to see you in fear. They want you to know you're going to die. So they’ll talk. They’ll gloat._

Crowley had said that Gabriel had gloated. And yet still, _still_, something in him recoiled from labelling Gabriel as evil.

“All right. All right. You obviously want to, um, want to talk without Crowley around. Please just- there’s no need for the melodrama-“

“Melodrama,” Gabriel says. “_Melodrama_. I’m not the melodramatic one, Aziraphale. I would have had yesterday be efficient. Dignified.”

“A dignified murder,” Aziraphale said, nodding. No, no – he was meant to be de-escalating this. “An efficient one.”

“You’re the one who decided to start breathing hellfire everywhere!” Gabriel suddenly roared.

_Breathing hellfire. _Oh, God, Crowley, what did you _do_? Aziraphale had splashed holy water, but- but of course he couldn’t deny it. He had to own it. He just prayed that there was nothing else Crowley had forgotten to mention. “You were _gloating_!” he said, voice rising. “And- And I’ll do it again, if you don’t let me down!”

“Do it, then,” Gabriel said. There was something old and wild in his eyes.

“… I don’t want to hurt you,” Aziraphale stammered.

“Didn’t care yesterday, did you? You looked ever so fucking pleased with yourself.” Gabriel wrapped his hand around Aziraphale’s throat, thumb and index finger painfully digging into his jaw. “But you’re still an angel. You’re still connected to Her. To us. I can feel it…”

Aziraphale could feel Gabriel beginning to press into him too. He was shocked by the depth of hatred that he felt from him. He’d thought Gabriel _disliked_ him, but this rage was as raw and new as a bloody wound. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Gabriel. I apologise. It was- it was the adrenaline, I didn’t mean to-“

“Trying to scare me. _Me_, Aziraphale!” Aziraphale’s mind fought to catch up. Fear – Gabriel had been afraid, and then ashamed of being afraid. Shame had turned into rage. “Well, I am going to scare _you._”

“I am,” Aziraphale said. He could feel the panic building in him, fear into terror into panic, and he needed to calm down or he wouldn’t be able to think at all. “I’m very scared, I’m sorry, I’m sorry for yesterday. Ever so sorry. I don’t want to-“ He swallowed; it was so difficult, against the iron pressure of Gabriel’s palm. “Breathe any fire.”

“I don’t think you can,” Gabriel said, with another psychic _shove_ down Aziraphale’s throat. “You’re _immune_ to it. You could breathe it in and out, but an angel can’t _summon_ it…”

That’s why Gabriel had wanted them away from Crowley. If they were on _their own side_, they weren’t bound by the diplomatic mores of Heaven and Hell. They were rogue agents. _That’s_ what he'd been scared of – Crowley summoning Hellfire. How much did angels know about the summoning? Even he only had a vague idea.

Aziraphale futilely tried to push Gabriel’s wrist back. “So why come down? You can’t kill either of us, why take the risk?”

“_Why are you scared_?” Gabriel hissed. His unnatural violet eyes were raking across Aziraphale’s face with such intensity that he could almost feel the lines they left. Like scratches. “I can’t kill you. So what are you scared of?”

“You,” Aziraphale said, with perfect sincerity. “Just you. You’ve made your point, please.”

“I’m not here to make a point! You think I’d risk my life making small talk with your demon to _make a point_? You weren’t scared yesterday, and now you are. I’m going to find out how you did it.”

Aziraphale felt icy cold. “I didn’t do anything. I stepped in. Nothing happened, and I stepped out.”

“You _knew_,” Gabriel said. “You’re scared now because you think I’m going to find out how you did it.”

“I don’t _know_ how I did it!” Aziraphale said. Just like in Eden, he had to deny without thinking. He tried to push Gabriel out of him again. “Just let me down. Please. And I’ll tell you everything I know about it.”

Gabriel didn’t let him move. But he did remove his hand from Aziraphale’s throat. With it Gabriel’s essence retreated, and Aziraphale could breathe.

“Thank you. Thank you, Gabriel,” Aziraphale said. He made sure to look suitably grateful. “You want to talk about yesterday… God said nothing to you? There was no truth in any of that…?”

“Of course not,” Gabriel sneered. “Like I said. I was thinking, why would an angel – even one as fucked up as you – care _so much _about humans? Let alone a _demon_. It was simple, once I worked it out. You always want to be the superior one, don’t you?”

Aziraphale blinked in genuine confusion. “What? The superior one?”

“That’s right. That’s what all your soft-hearted, indulgent bullshit is about. With your condescending fucking pacifism and your ‘greater good’. You want to be the _gracious_ one. Benevolent. Merciful. Never want to be at someone else’s mercy.”

“Well, no,” Aziraphale said, taking a step back. “Obviously! But that’s not why-“

“Sure, it is. That’s why you could never stand to be among us. Because you knew that you were inferior. You knew you could never hope to compare to any of us in strength, or intelligence, and especially not holiness. So you slum it with humans and demons instead.”

“No, Gabriel. No.” Gabriel had no hellfire. He couldn’t make Aziraphale Fall. He could do things to him that would hurt a lot, Aziraphale knew, but it was all physical. He could cope with physical pain.

“Yeah. That’s where all the prissy human manners come in, right? ‘May we meet on a better occasion.’ Fuck, I should have known then that you’d done something, that you had some plan! Walking straight into the fire, instead of _crying_ and _begging_ like when we demoted you? You’re a coward, but yesterday you were so fucking smug. And I’m going to find out how you did it.”

Aziraphale lifted his chin. Crowley had played him yesterday, and now he needed to play Crowley. Crowley certainly wasn’t afraid of angelic disapproval; frankly, he often revelled in it. “I was trying to help you, Gabriel. And now I’m going to do the same. Let it go.”

“Let it go?” Gabriel stalked towards him; twigs snapped, and dry holly leaves crackled. “No.”

“There’s nothing you can _do_!” Aziraphale said, but Gabriel’s hand was at his throat again, squeezing.

With a gesture Gabriel vanished both of their clothes.

Whatever Aziraphale had been expecting, that wasn’t it. “What in Heaven’s name…?”

Gabriel pressed his other hand to Aziraphale’s chest, and he suddenly realised what Gabriel was doing.

“I _will_ find out.”

Angels didn’t embrace much anymore. Some did, he was sure, but since the War and the Fall everyone had always been fully clothed and buttoned up whenever he’d had to visit. The kind of trust and vulnerability that embracing necessitated didn’t seem to be particularly prevalent in Heaven. They were all soldiers now.

But Aziraphale knew from his questioning at the Trial of the Watchers that in such a mingling of essences, thoughts and emotions and memories were laid bare, barer than naked bodies for humans. That’s what Gabriel wanted. Gabriel was going to search out the secret of their survival.

Aziraphale tried to shove him off. He couldn't control his breathing - it was coming out in short, painful gasps. Gabriel responded by pressing the length of his body against Aziraphale’s; their human bodies provided the obstacles of membrane, joint and limb, and Gabriel was trying to get around it by as much touch as possible.

It was obscene. It was profane. Aziraphale had barely registered it as _possible. _“No,” he said, firmly. “Gabriel – you _can’t_-“

“Then give it to me!” Gabriel said. His breath was hot, and it smelt of the cold air of the upper heavens. The incongruity was almost enough to distract Aziraphale from the hardness of Gabriel’s penis against his abdomen.

Aziraphale was no stranger to nudity. He was a creature of habit, and tended to stick with the penis and testicles which was most common among human males, though he had been a eunuch bureaucrat in no fewer than nine different royal courts. But no one had touched any of his genitals for well over five hundred years, and he burnt like a brand at the shock and embarrassment of it.

He pulled himself back to the reality of his situation. Gabriel couldn’t kill him, not properly. The important thing was to keep the secret of their survival safe, and, if he could, put off a discorporation until Crowley could find them. “It won’t _work_, just _stop-“_

“Then get out,” Gabriel snarled. Aziraphale barely recognised him. He had always been terrified of him, yes, but until Tadfield Airbase he had never seen him so openly furious.

“No.” He closed his eyes, wincing at the sensation of Gabriel’s hatred and rage and… resentment? Something else, cloying and choking.

Gabriel squeezed his throat so hard that dark coruscations danced among the trees. “I will _make you_ get out.”

“There’s nothing you can _do_. If you want to talk, discorporate me and we’ll go Up. I’m not leaving my body.” Gabriel was pushing into him, but Aziraphale had millennia of practice at hiding and obfuscation, and the secret was buried far too deeply for Gabriel to grasp it. “For Heaven’s sake, stop!”

“For Heaven’s sake,” Gabriel echoed, with a strange, strangled voice. He turned Aziraphale around and shoved him down onto the forest floor.

Aziraphale yelped – dry holly leaves cracked under him, pricking him with a thousand thorns all at once. Gabriel gripped his right wrist and pulled his arm round and _up_, horribly, wrenchingly _wrong._ He cried out, and tried to pull free, but Gabriel held him down. He could smell the dry mud and the rotting leaves, and his shoulder screamed in protest.

It was so strange. One second he was in the forest, Gabriel bearing down on his back, holly thorns embedded in his splayed hand, and then in the next he was in Crowley’s flat. After Crowley had left for the bookshop, Aziraphale had been able to examine the strange statue in his flat at his leisure. One angel, or demon, with copper wings and hair, twisting the arm of another in gold, up and back, just like this.

Aziraphale was pulled back to reality by the completely unexpected and alien sensation of something hard and hot against his fundament. He struggled, purely out of instinct. Terror and _horror_ burnt like acid at the back of his throat.

“Get out,” Gabriel said thunderously above him, behind him, “or I will make you.”

He couldn’t move. He couldn’t speak, either to beg or to spit defiance.

“Fine. If you won’t tell me,” Gabriel said. With no warning and no aid he sheathed himself in Aziraphale’s body, right to the hilt.

Aziraphale had known many types of pain in his six thousand years on Earth. He had been stabbed more times than he cared to remember, and this was worse. A stab felt like a punch at first – it was dull, blunt. The pain he had experienced during his discorporation had been terrible, but fast. The light and the heat and the severing of every atom from its neighbour, but over in just a second.

The only other pain which had come close to this had been when his secondary pair of wings had been sawn off. His beheadings had been much faster. But even that had been done with a sharp blade. The pain of this was like his wings being torn out, rather than cut. This pain was not a bright, blinding red, but darker and deeper. It felt like being stabbed from the inside; his loins pulsed with the agony of it. His hips ached as though they were being slowly pulled apart.

_God, what did I do?_ he screamed inwardly, and he knew that Gabriel heard it. _Why, why, Lord?_

The pain of the holly faded to nothing. It was almost pleasurable in comparison. Aziraphale closed his eyes to protect them, but that made everything worse.

He opened them again. It would be worth losing an eye, to avoid that darkness.

“Aren’t you enjoying this?” Gabriel hissed in his ear. “I would have thought given what everyone knows about you, you’d enjoy this.”

With that he gave a particularly violent thrust, and a sick wave lurched through Aziraphale’s body. It was like a jolt of twisted pleasure to his penis and up his spine, and when it faded he realised that he had moaned at the shame and the pain of it.

“I knew it,” Gabriel said behind him. “Fucking _filth_.”

Aziraphale felt dizzy. Tired. He could barely feel the holly at all anymore, or smell the mulch. He couldn’t hear anything over that that dull, brutal noise of Gabriel against his body. It was as though his spirit was slowly disconnecting from his body, unfastening the buttons, unlacing the stays…

_No_, he thought, _no, no, no – _if he left his body, then Gabriel could do far worse things to him than this. For Crowley’s sake, he had to cling on to the pain and the shame and the violation. He made himself think of the blood between his legs. The tearing. The weight on his back, and the _wrongwrongwrong_ pressure on his right shoulder as Gabriel forced his arm back and up. He had to stay. Leaving would only make it worse.

But he’d been in his body too long. And his body didn’t believe him.

His rational mind was the only thing holding his spirit and his body together, and Gabriel was deep enough in him to feel when it buckled; he wrenched himself and Aziraphale’s essence free of Aziraphale’s body, and abandoned his own. Aziraphale couldn’t even flee. He froze, terrified, and Gabriel was on him with the force of a falcon snatching a pigeon from the air.

He felt the claws dig deep, and the tumultuous beating of Gabriel’s six wings around them. He couldn’t see, decorporated. There was only Gabriel, and the savagery of his smile before he plunged into Aziraphale’s essence.

Aziraphale liked his body to be comfortable. He liked things that were warm and soft, worn with age. Gabriel’s rape had torn that apart. But it was nothing compared to what he was doing to Aziraphale’s soul.

If this had been Raziel, Aziraphale would have lost within minutes. Raziel knew how to seek out secrets, and how to cut them out with a scalpel. That was what it had been like in the Trial of the Watchers; Raziel rough, quick, impersonal with his physical corporation. He hadn’t cared about either Aziraphale’s modesty or feelings, or about the ten million angels watching them. Then he had plunged his long fingers into Aziraphale’s essence, flipping through a myriad little sins and foibles like library cards. His mind had slid over the nights where Aziraphale wept over Adam and Eve, over the shock of seeing a child’s body being eaten by Nephilim, over the pitched knock-down fight between him and Penemue. Raziel had just looked for sexual pleasure with humans, and Aziraphale knew that he wouldn't find any. He had no experience of sexual pleasure with anyone, so there wouldn’t even be any memories for Raziel to have to examine in depth.

No, he was found innocent, and tossed to the side like an empty cup. He had reeled, shaking and clawing at his head. When he entered his corporation again areas of his skin had felt abnormally sensitive. The hairs were still standing from searching fingers.

Raziel’s touch was a scalpel. Gabriel was in his essence like a madman with a hammer, smashing everything he could lay his claws on in the hope of finding the knowledge he sought in the shards.

In a way, it was better. It would take so much longer to recover from, but Gabriel hadn’t seen the secret. In the destruction he wrought, things could be overlooked. Crowley was still safe.

There is another response to threat that people don’t like to talk about. If you can’t fight, or flee, you might freeze. But in some there is a further instinct to ameliorate whatever is coming with submissiveness. The instinct to smile and laugh, to beg and flatter and plead. To cringe, docile and servile. To be pleasant. To apologise for the inconvenience of being unwilling. To soften every _no_ with a smile. To be so unthreatening, so pathetic, that they let you live afterwards.

When things are really, truly desperate – when Death stands waiting and watching – there can be a chance of safety in complete submission. To sacrifice the dignity and hope of resistance for the possibility of survival.

Everything is redeemable if one is still alive. You could come out shamed and self-loathing, but even they can be badges of victory, if you are alive to feel them._ The gentle and yielding is the disciple of life_, Aziraphale thought. _The reed and the oak tree_…

Sometimes this didn’t work. His demotion loomed large in his mind. But in Heaven, often enough, it did. And Gabriel had projected onto him his own desires for superiority. He would give Gabriel the chance to be merciful. He would offer him everything except the secret of the fire and the water.

He curled around their secret, making it as small and dense as a diamond, a mere chip of a diamond, and he gave Gabriel free rein in the rest of him. He offered up each weakness and sin, and let Gabriel revel in his shame and his guilt. He offered up every joy he could think of. The births of Cain and Awan, his first taste of honey, tipsiness and merriment, star showers and waterfalls and the Epic of Gilgamesh. Ink and gilt, irises and the sea. Brocade and oysters and laughing until he wept with Crowley, watching Hamlet with Crowley, clinking glasses of champagne with Crowley, holding hands, oh, holding hands with Crowley…

He gave them all up for Gabriel to destroy, and he felt the archangel’s rage and disgust like a maelstrom around him. He begged without words for Gabriel to spare him. He let Gabriel see all of his terror and his despair.

He kept only one thing back.

Among the pain and panic and vicious _embarrassment_ he tried to think. It was next to impossible. Bodiless, he was pinned and helpless, utterly defenceless. Gabriel had known that would be the outcome if Aziraphale fled his body. But if they were to return, to be recorporated… Gabriel was strong. But so was Aziraphale, and Aziraphale had been around Crowley long enough to pick up a trick or two.

In any case, it would be better than this. Anything was better than this.

He flung the memory of the physical rape at Gabriel, and let him feel all of Aziraphale’s agony and shame. The tearing, the throbbing, the pressure and the malevolent pleasure. For all that he didn’t eat or drink, Aziraphale had guessed that he was a physical hedonist in his own way. Anyone who enjoyed jogging enjoyed pain, and movement, and the feeling of their own power. Coupled with his narcissism, it made Gabriel far more vulnerable to certain temptations.

And Gabriel took the bait. He dragged them both down.

Aziraphale slammed back into his corporeal form, and felt every single pain in new and stunning clarity. He felt as though he had been torn in two. Everywhere that wasn’t scratched and cut was bruised.

He made no attempt to prevent the tears and the whimpers that his body decided on without any input from him. “Please. Please, not again, please-“

“Not so stoic and silent are you now, are you?” Gabriel said. “I told you. I _told you_ that no one tries to frighten me.”

Azirpahale shook his head. “No, no! I’m sorry, I’m so sorry-“

“All those secrets! I never knew how deep the rot went! Bet it made you feel so clever, didn’t it? Pulling the wool over our eyes? Clever, superior Aziraphale, who always has his pathetic little smiles and his arch little comments that he thinks the rest of us don’t understand!"

“No, no, no…” His left hand found something strange. An absence of prickles. A chill in the August morning. _Die Kälte des Schwertes mit der Kälte des Steines aufnehmen_.

Gabriel turned him over, and the holly in his back was like nails. This was worse, being able to see Gabriel’s face. His smile. “I’m not tired at all, Aziraphale. This doesn’t stop until you tell me. Tell me or I’ll take it from you.”

Aziraphale started to shake, and he felt that dreadful paralysis begin to creep over him again. He gathered the last shreds of his strength and brought the stone in his left hand against Gabriel’s temple.

He caught him off guard. Gabriel hadn’t been expecting someone sobbing and begging to fight back.

The difference between a decorporation and a discorporation is that one is rather more permanent than the other. Aziraphale had voluntarily decorporated a few times – in the Judgement Theatre for his demotion, and of course when he had swapped forms with Crowley. A _dis_corporation meant that the body was no longer habitable, and the angel or demon in such an exposed position was immediately pulled Up or Down to safety.

Gabriel had not wanted to discorporate Aziraphale and risk having him brought up to Heaven, and witnesses. So when Gabriel toppled to the side, Aziraphale didn’t stop. He brought the stone down on Gabriel’s head again, and again.

There was blood in his nose. There was blood in his hair, and his ears, and his eyes. He didn’t stop until there was nothing but liquid and splinters of bone.

Then his body dropped the stone, and his spirit dropped the body.


	6. Chapter 6

Crowley felt it just outside Comptons of Soho: Aziraphale’s sudden shock and fear, like a migraine, like a cold knife in the side of the head. “No! _Fuck!_”

He turned around and ran back up Old Compton Street, shoving people out of the way without ever touching them, and he almost expected to see the bookshop in flames again.

It wasn’t, of course. It was empty, of fire and of angels. “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Crowley said under his breath as he threw out his senses into every corner of the bookshop, but he already knew he’d find nothing.

He stood beneath the oculus, closed his eyes, and focused. It wasn’t like the fire on Saturday. Aziraphale had been completely gone then. Now, Crowley could still feel him on Earth. He was close. Closer than he had been when Crowley had had to break him out of the Bastille… England. London, even, possibly…

_Why,_ he thought, as he lurched out, unlocking the Bentley with a click of his fingers, _why aren’t they in Heaven? Why is Aziraphale still on Earth?_

It was good that Aziraphale was still on Earth, obviously. It meant there was a chance that Crowley could save him. But it was unexpected, and in Crowley’s experience this rarely bode well.

He did a hundred miles an hour up Clerkenwell Road and ignored the sirens that followed. He couldn’t close his eyes, but wearing Aziraphale’s body must have tethered them together even more tightly than before. He needed to go north-west, almost exactly north-west (not that he thought of it in such terms; cardinal directions were more Aziraphale’s Sort of Thing). He clicked his fingers as he sped onto Old Street, and the sirens behind him died with a final wail.

How could they have been so stupid? Well, he knew how _Aziraphale_ could have been so stupid – desperate, _still_, to believe that any kind of justice would come from Heaven. That God gave a damn. In times of stress Aziraphale retreated into doing The Right Thing, the _angelic_ thing. It was the only thing that had eventually persuaded him to help Crowley try to stop Armageddon. Which meant that this was _Crowley's_ fault. He knew what Heaven was like; he had seen what _Gabriel_ was like! Had it all been a lie? Had Gabriel been given his powers back?

New sirens behind him, and Crowley threw a curse over his shoulder with a snarl. He managed to avoid killing anyone in Hackney, and swung north at Cambridge Heath.

Where the hell- where the _fuck_ were they?

He was sweating by the time the time he hit Stratford. There were roadworks everywhere, and he resorted to shoving cars out of the way and even mending a stretch of road so he didn’t have to slow down. He could feel… He was closer to Aziraphale, but nowhere near close enough. He should have flown. He hated flying, but London was too _thick_, too _dense_.

No. Aerial engagement with an archangel was nothing short of suicide. He pressed his foot down on the accelerator instead. “Come on…”

He was trapped in a nightmare of déjà vu. This felt just like the world ending again.

As soon as he had Aziraphale back, he was going to summon all the hellfire the pit would give him. The next angel he saw he flambéed on sight.

He curved around Walthamstow, swung north. North, north – his heart was a compass needle, and Aziraphale was his North.

He hadn’t been up this way in a long time. The buildings here were lower and more spaced out. The roads were wider. He picked up speed again. It was nearly ten in the morning.

Aziraphale was still on Earth.

“Fuck You,” he spat. “Fuckfuckfuckfuck! What do You _want_ from us?”

He hated how his voice cracked. Still. After six thousand years.

He was truly suburban now. He halted his sixth high speed pursuit, and it was going to be a royal pain in the arse sorting out that shit, and he would enjoy every second of it if that was all he had to worry about after this. He was in the land of car dealerships and playing fields, Toby Carvery and semi-detached houses…

And trees. Lots more trees. Hedgerows, tree nurseries. It barely looked like London anymore.

And he was getting closer.

Epping? What was in _Epping_ these days? The last time he’d been through Epping it had been a dismally wet evening and he’d got soaked to the skin shifting marker pegs for the M25. The shape had obviously been the important thing, but Crowley had been very happy that Epping Forest was captured inside the orbital motorway, so that its influence could pour down into the centre of London.

Crowley liked Epping Forest, because he liked _spooky_. Epping Forest was nice and spooky, even in the 21st century. Aziraphale had had a nasty little run-in with Dick Turpin at the beginning of the 18th and refused to go back until Ned Lawrence tempted him out in the 1920s. That had been fine by Crowley. It left more vice and fun for him.

Aziraphale had been annoyingly sociable in the early 1700s (‘annoyingly’ meant, obviously, _without Crowley_), enjoying all the plays and salons and coffee shops and all those _wonderful_ evenings with his _lovely_ friends from the Scriblerus Club. Crowley had tried to join the Hellfire Club in retaliation and had been put on the waiting list.

He nearly killed them all in one blow for that outrage. In between organising all his vengeful little scandals and trials and duels, whenever he was bored he’d go to Epping Forest in the hopes of being robbed. Crowley was a city demon through and through, but haunting Epping Forest for a few decades was like doing a paleo diet – he wanted to reassure himself that he still had the old skills in him, sharpen a few instincts that city living had left dormant. He’d even had an inadvisable little flirtation with the woman who haunted the Suicide Pool.

But he could think of nothing there that would interest angels.

He was so close now that his heart was pounding in his ears. The Bentley squealed to a stop on the side of the Epping New Road that cut straight up through the forest. Crowley could feel Aziraphale like a stitch in his side. He got out of the car and began to run through the trees.

They weren’t as thick as they had been in the old days, but they tricked the eyes. Crowley pulled off his sunglasses with a hiss.

It was a Monday morning, and the place was deserted. Crowley didn’t run into any anarchist squatters or teenagers doing drugs.

He also didn’t run into the bodies.

No, he saw them when he was still a long way off. The flash of pale white and rich red stood out among the green and the brown.

This was the point at which he realised he had absolutely no plan as to how he was going to face down the Archangel Gabriel.

He turned into a snake, as small as he could without thinking too hard, and slithered through the leaves. There were no birds; the forest was silent. He could feel Aziraphale, very close by. He tasted the air, and couldn’t find another angel. Just blood.

He took his human form again for the last few metres. “Oh, holy _fuck_.”

Aziraphale’s naked body lay on its back, dead eyes staring up at the sky. It was absolutely covered in blood. The hair was as red as Crowley’s.

Next to it lay Gabriel’s body, also stark naked. At least, Crowley assumed it was Gabriel’s body, because the head was barely there anymore. Just tenderised flesh and bone edges and tufts of slick hair.

“Fuckfuckfuckfuck_fuck_.” Crowley looked around. “Aziraphale?”

Out of the corner of his eyes there was something like a flutter of wings; he turned around, but there was nothing there. “Was that you? Angel, please-”

“… it’s me.” A voice, so soft he had to strain to hear it over the sound of the wind in the leaves. “It’s me.”

Crowley’s breath tore out of his lungs like a rake up his throat. He sank to his knees, and holly prickled his legs through his jeans. “Thank- Shit. Hsngdhf. Can you… What happened? Are you all right? Why aren’t you in Heaven?”

Aziraphale didn’t say _Ever so sorry to disappoint you_. Crowley didn’t realise at the time just how soul-chillingly terrifying that was. “Oh… I wasn’t discorporated.”

Crowley swallowed painfully. His hands were shaking, he suddenly noticed. He looked back at the two bodies, but his brain refused to take anything in, let alone make sense of it. “Gabriel?”

“Ah. He was.” Aziraphale paused for a second. He sounded dazed. “I need to bury the body.”

“Ngh. I could vanish it.”

“No! No. I have to bury it. Have to bury the dead.”

“Okay. Okay.” He had no spare energy to argue, or to discern the paths Aziraphale was wandering on. He didn’t even have the energy to feel annoyed that, inevitably, _he_ was going to be the one burying the dead. “Um. I need to catch up.”

The voice was a little closer to him now. “Please can we just… please. Just for a minute.”

“Sure. Sure.” Crowley realised he was staring at the Archangel Gabriel’s penis. It was bloody. There were smears of blood on the hips. Crowley’s brain entirely refused to contemplate what that meant, so he sat back in the rotting mulch of the forest and looked up at the sky instead. It would be a hot day. Beyond the canopy there was only sky blue. “I can get rid of the blood, at least. “

“Ah. Hm. Yes, I suppose there’s rather a lot. That would be all right, wouldn’t it?”

“Course it would. Blood doesn’t count.” _Blood belongs to God_, his mind supplied, and he thought with sudden savagery that She could have it. He waved his hand, but he could still taste it at the back of his throat. He risked a brief glance back at Aziraphale’s body. “… do you want me to heal-“

“No!” Aziraphale almost became properly visible, so great was whatever emotion he was feeling. He faded back to a tracery of light. “Sorry. No. I’ll do it. Just. Don’t look at it.”

“I’m not,” Crowley said, turning his whole head to look away. “Promise. Looking at a Dr. Pepper can over there.”

“That’s. That’s good. I mean, not that there’s a pepper can there. I didn’t think they kept pepper in cans, but…”

“It’s a drink. Fizzy drink. And it’s fine. I’ll focus on that. Warms a demon’s heart to see litter, remember?”

“Yes… I can hear you, but I can’t see… Found that out, on Saturday.” Crowley felt a breeze on his face, from a fluttering of wings.

“Yeah. Um. On Saturday I could see you, even when you were… Can’t really, now.”

“… there’s been some damage. Just tatters left, really.” Aziraphale’s voice was tremulous.

“In your essence?” Crowley looked back at Aziraphale’s body and forced his eyes shut. “You need to get back in. You’re too exposed otherwise.”

“I know. I just. I didn’t want to see it, for a while.”

“Understandable. It’s all right. I’ve seen you looking worse.”

“When? During the bubonic plague? In the trenches?” It was a shade of the normal Aziraphale, but the audible effort was almost worse than the concussed monotone.

“I was going to say to say that party in Florence, with the pink chaperon.”

“It was a dusky rose!” Aziraphale was making a sound which could have been a laugh, or could have been a sob. It might have been both.

“It was awful, whatever it was,” Crowley said. “Aziraphale, you have to get back in. I know it’s shit, but-“

“No! No. Sorry. I’m so sorry, I just need another minute. I didn’t want to look at it. Didn’t want to feel it.”

“I understand,” Crowley said gently.

“I’m ever so sorry. I’d hoped to have all this cleared away by the time you got here, but… But it seems I lost track of the time.”

“It happens.” He had so many questions, but he wasn’t so cruel as to ask them now. “I can do all of that, don’t worry. I’ll sort it. Your only job is to heal your corporation and come to the car.”

“All right.” There was a choked noise at Crowley’s right ear. “I’m sorry, I just can’t bear to go back in.”

Taking care to do so quietly, Crowley snarled at the sky, then calmed his voice again. “What’s worse, me healing it, or going in as it is?”

“You healing it. Having to- Perhaps you could. Something loose, something like, I don’t know-“

“Sure, easy,” Crowley said, and with a wave of his hand he manifested a thick linen robe. “All decent. It’s like that one you wore in Uruk.”

“Thank you. That’s. I liked that. I’m sorry. I’ll try to… Can you look away?”

“No need to apologise.” Crowley’s soul kicked his brain into gear. “Tell you what, I’ll go over, get something dug. I’ll sing a song, so you know where I am.”

“That’s good. That would be good. Thank you.”

Crowley stood up, and stomped a few paces into the trees. He swept the leaves and debris away with his hand, and bore through the earth with his eyes. It began to kick up in scattered handfuls in self-defence. He’d have vanished the corpse, or burnt it, but whatever Aziraphale needed right now Aziraphale would get.

He needed a song. A song that Aziraphale hated anyway. Something that had no chance of playing when they were in a bar or shop.

_And yn that bed ther lythe a knyght,_

_His wowndis bledyng day & nyght;_

_Lully, lulley, lully, lulley!_

_The fawcon hath born my mak away..._

Nope.

You never realised how many songs were about religion, death, or sex until you had to come up with one that was about none of them.

“_In taberna quando sumus, non curamus quid sit humus_,” he sang, and while it wasn’t one that Aziraphale hated, it would do in a pinch. No one sang it to the original tune anymore.

The soil was coming up in armfuls now. There was a movement of air like an inhalation, and then Crowley could hear the shifting of leaves, the quickly strangled whimper of pain.

Crowley stared at the deepening grave. “Are you all right?”

“Just… Just one moment.” There was a breath of the soap-and-water, apple-blossom scent that told Crowley that Aziraphale was performing healings. A few roots in the hole in the earth caught fire, and Crowley quickly put them out. The leaves shifted again. “All right. I’m all right.”

Crowley glanced over his shoulder. Aziraphale was staring down at Gabriel’s body with his head cocked to the side. There was already blood blossoming on the white robe, and Crowley cleaned it away with a thought. He felt a stress headache beginning to press against his forehead.

“Don’t look at it, angel. Grave’s ready.”

Aziraphale looked up at him. His head moved jerkily, and his arms hung limp and heavy at his sides. He didn’t look like Aziraphale at all, and Crowley realised that Aziraphale might be _inside_ the corporation, but he wasn’t inhabiting it so much as puppeteering it. Still, it would be some measure of protection.

Crowley imagined the body and associated gore moving into the grave, and he brought his hands together to cover it in the soil. This was magic more in keeping with his nature than healing or cleaning, and he breathed easier once it was in the ground.

Aziraphale still wasn’t breathing at all. His face was blank, his eyes dead. It was like a gruesome Aziraphale marionette.

Crowley held out his hand, and the body jerked away from it. He mercilessly shoved his hurt down. “Okay. Don’t worry. I won’t touch you.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No need. Like I said. Car’s this way.” Crowley looked around for anything they’d missed, and vanished the stone which had been covered in blood. “Clothes?”

Aziraphale was silent for a long moment. His mouth twisted, and Crowley felt _relieved_. Some part of him was connecting to his body again, at least. “Vanished. They’re gone.”

Crowley exhaled through his nose. Keeping his own mouth in a neutral line was more difficult than the whole burial. “Okay. Still have your cardigan at home. There’ll be something.” He took a step, and waited for Aziraphale to follow him.

One foot in front of the other. One minute at a time.


	7. Chapter 7

Time was passing very strangely. For thirty seconds the world was bright and pulsing. Textures, sounds, smells slapped him. Sticks snapped under his bare feet. Everything hurt.

And the world retreated into a dull grey calm, and everything was perfectly blank. It felt like the strange, tired feeling that followed a nasty cut or sudden wound – not quite pleasure, but relaxation at a right angle to it.

And then, suddenly, the woods around them were completely different, and Crowley was looking anxiously over his shoulder.

Time passed in a cycle, the three stages repeating. Panicked pain in the forest, pleasant numbness in the forest, and suddenly he was sitting in the Bentley with no idea how he had got in there. Not that it mattered. Crowley was looking at him expectantly, hand hovering over the music player. “Sorry, dear boy?”

“I asked if you wanted the radio on. I don’t think Freddie Mercury is quite the… but Radio 3?”

“Oh. All right.” This was another kindness: Radio 3 was Aziraphale’s, Classic FM was Crowley’s. Worrying, in a way. What _must_ he look like?

Crowley switched on the radio; it was always tuned to whatever station he wanted at the time. The instantly recognisable voice of Maria Callas greeted them: -_furtiva, quante miserie conobbi –_

Crowley switched it off with a noise like a boiling kettle. Aziraphale blinked slowly at the radio. “_Tosca_.”

“Yeah. Yeah. Bit loud. She had a set of pipes on her...”

“You like _Tosca_,” Aziraphale said. His voice sounded oddly slow, even to his own ears. “We both do…”

“Yeah. Just a bit loud for me at the moment, angel,” Crowley said. He was staring straight forward out of the windscreen at the rustling trees, hands tight on the steering wheel. He was baring his teeth at something. “Nerves can’t take _Tosca_ today.”

“Hmm. Puccini can be like that,” Aziraphale said dreamily. “I don’t mind Classic FM.”

“You liar. What time is it? Half ten. _Woman’s Hour_, you like _Woman’s Hour._ Radio 4. Right.”

Aziraphale closed his eyes again as the nice, calm woman with her nice, calm RP voice spoke about the importance of learning a musical instrument.

Crowley turned the key in the ignition, and then turned it back. The radio turned off. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“No.”

“Right.”

Aziraphale could hear the pain in Crowley’s voice, and that he could not ignore. However far gone he was, he couldn’t look away while Crowley sounded like that. He forced his eyes open, and saw that Crowley’s knuckles were white on the steering wheel.

“How about… what do I need to know?”

Aziraphale looked at the malevolent trees. Even in the bright summer sunshine they looked dark. Twisted. “He wanted to know how we survived. That’s what he was looking for.” He rubbed the spot between his eyebrows; he was beginning to feel tethered again, and he hated it. “I didn’t let him have that. He doesn’t know how.”

“Okay. That’s good. That’s great.” Crowley was still straight ahead. “When you say that you didn’t let him have that…”

“That’s what he was there for. In my essence for. I threw everything else at him. Curled up around that. Kept it safe.” Long sentences were beyond him. It felt as though every single word was a piece of meat in his stomach, half-digested. To say it, he had to pull it up his throat with a fishing line of effort and spit it out. The nausea and the acid taste of bile… “They don’t know.”

Aziraphale closed his eyes again, and leant his head against the window. The glass was pleasantly cool, and that was terrible, because it meant that full feeling was returning to him.

He’d never been so aware of his fundament in his life. He’d never used it, obviously. Even though he had healed the bleeding and the pain should be gone, the uncomfortable awareness remained. “Radio. Please.”

“Sure, sorry.” Crowley started the car, and drove then out of the woods. He kept the speed limit the whole way back into London.

*

Crowley bought every steel-capped thermos Romany’s had. Three were decorated to look like they were wrapped in marble, and the fourth was blue, with a border of vegetables and spades and trowels. From there it was five minutes to Soho Square, which was the closest reasonably large patch of earth they could think of. He parked extremely illegally outside Barclay’s, and with a gesture changed his clothes into those of a bomb disposal officer. “Are you going to be okay?”

“Yes. I’ll be fine.” Aziraphale shifted uncomfortably. “Better safe than sorry. How long did you say it’ll take you?”

“About fifteen minutes. I have to call it up from the Pit at the centre of the Earth. If someone breaks my concentration I’ll have to start again… If I can even summon it anymore.” He looked away, at the Square. “Should be able to.”

“So it’s just concentration?” Aziraphale said. “Heaven’s always wanted to know. Gabr- I used to be asked to find out how it was made, if I could. Seeing as Hell knew our rites.”

“You don’t make it. You call it. You hate hard enough and you promise that you’ll give it something to hurt.”

“Oh,” Aziraphale said softly.

“Yeah. So. No unscrewing the caps,” he echoed. “It’s not like holy water. It’ll leap out at you.”

“Mmhm. I won’t.” Crowley was making no move to get out of the car. “I’ll be fine. Leave the keys in the ignition and I’ll keep the radio on.”

Crowley still didn’t move.

“I can’t go out there with you, can I? If it’s as volatile as you say it is.” Aziraphale bit the inside of his cheek, hard. “Don’t _baby_ me, Crowley, I said I’ll be fine. _Please_.”

That worked, and Crowley got out without a word. Aziraphale waited until he was at the gates of the garden, watched him whisper something to a woman with a pram who began running, and then turned the radio off.

Normally he would have been as curious as anything to see how hellfire was summoned; it was one of Hell’s last great secrets in their Cold War. Today, he just stared at a brick wall in silence, very deliberately not looking inwards to see what damage Gabriel had done to his angelic essence.

He blinked as Crowley slammed back into the car, tossing the carrier bag of thermoses into the back footwell. “Some prick called the actual bomb squad,” he said as they sped out of the square.

“I can’t think why,” Aziraphale said. “What time is it? That was fast.”

Crowley shot him a worried glance. “It took forty minutes. Kept losing… Doesn’t matter.” He parked outside the bookshop, and instantly was at the passenger side, opening the door for Aziraphale.

“Time keeps… skipping,” he said. “It’s not something you’re doing, is it?”

Aziraphale watched Crowley’s Adam’s apple bob up and down. “No.”

“Oh. Well.” He climbed stiffly out of the car, and glared at Crowley; Crowley was very pointedly staring down the road.

Aziraphale suddenly felt horribly, horribly embarrassed. Ashamed and humiliated. He huffed out a sigh, and closed the door. “Listen. We ought to stay together, I know, but- But _please_.” He didn’t even know what he was asking for.

Crowley looked back at him. “You’re mad if you think I’m leaving. Come on. Brandy.”

*

Crowley poured two generous measures, then looked through the door, drained one, and refilled it. He carried them out. “Here.”

Aziraphale had wrapped the paisley throw from the sofa around him like a himation over his robe. “Thank you.”

Crowley sat in Aziraphale’s usual chair. “It’s 5 o’clock somewhere.”

“No, I mean… thank you.”

“Oh, fuck off.”

“Language,” Aziraphale said. He was staring into the amber depths of his brandy. “You were right.”

Crowley put his glass down and pointed at Aziraphale. “Don’t you dare.”

“You were right, I should have thrown him out, I should never have believed that-“

“That there’d be any kind of justice from Heaven?” Crowley snarled, and pulled himself back. That wasn’t about him and the Fall. “Of course you’d hope for justice from Heaven. You’re an angel. You can’t undo an eternity of indoctrination in a few hours.”

“I was so stupid.”

“Drink. Drink, go on,” Crowley said, and waited until Aziraphale obeyed and took a mouthful. Aziraphale still hadn’t made eye contact with him. It wasn’t the healthiest coping mechanism, perhaps, but Crowley was a realist. “Good.”

Aziraphale nodded to himself, and took another drink. “It’s barely even lunchtime.”

Crowley studied him. “Why does that matter?”

“Just… you think of this sort of thing happening at night. These conversations in the early hours. Not at nine o’clock in the morning. Not when the shops are just opening.”

“Happens when it happens.” Crowley had finished his second glass; he poured another. “So. He transported you both?”

Aziraphale closed his eyes. That was fine. Crowley knew all about the fuckery of eye contact. “Yes. He hadn’t planned Epping Forest. Just wanted to go where…” He opened his eyes. “Where there were fewer humans. Where we wouldn’t be disturbed.”

The brandy roiled in Crowley’s stomach. “Gosh. Right.” He put the glass down again. He felt sick.

“He was waiting for you to go out the door. All of the rest of it was just him waiting. And I was sitting there talking about _collateral damage_ and Jan van Eyck like a bloody idiot! God, I was so _stupid_-“

“Stop,” Crowley begged. Without thinking he was on his knees in front of the sofa, Aziraphale’s hand in his.

They both froze.

Crowley was the first to move; he opened his hands to allow Aziraphale to pull his away. Like he had in the forest.

Instead Aziraphale looked down at them. His hands were trembling, but his fingertips were featherlight against Crowley’s palm. Crowley imagined all his love and admiration rising to his skin like champagne bubbles: a wide, shallow bowl of adoration for Aziraphale to wash his fingers in.

He saw Aziraphale feel it, because the angel’s whole face crumbled. But his fingers slid across Crowley’s hand until they were palm to palm.

“You’re not stupid. I know I said it, and I’m sorry. It shouldn’t be stupid to trust your family.”

“I feel stupid,” Aziraphale admitted, eyes still closed. “I feel _so_ stupid. I feel like an idiot.”

“Yeah, well, that’s ‘cause you’re an idiot,” Crowley risked, and he got the half-laugh he had been praying to a silent God for. He was ready, waiting with a smile, when Aziraphale finally met his eyes. “We were both conned by someone worse than either of us. As much as it pains me as a professional evildoer to say it. It happens. Free will, remember? That’s what our side is all about.”

“Our own side,” Aziraphale said.

“That’s right. So we’re no longer responsible for what our old sides do, yeah? … can you talk about it, yet? About what he wanted?”

Aziraphale shook his head. “I will, but… I don’t know what to do.”

“… sometimes in Hell they’d get handsy,” Crowley said, very delicately. Aziraphale gave him the look of horror that he’d be fearing, and he risked turning his hands a little, rubbing the backs of the angel’s with his thumbs. “Encouraged for demons to try to get the jump on each other. Whatever guise that takes – mostly your bog-standard violence, but the incubi obviously preferred… Don’t worry about it, that’s not why I’m telling you. I was almost always faster than them, and anyone who did get any further got the offending part bitten off. But I always felt better after a shed. A hot bath with some of that extortionate foamy stuff, seeing as you’re not evolved enough to get a completely new skin. No offence.” It’s not like they needed to worry about forensic evidence, after all.

Now that Aziraphale had met his eyes he hadn’t so much as blinked. He nodded slowly. “That sounds good.”

“Yeah? Good. Do you want me down here or up there?” Aziraphale went pale at being asked to make a decision, and Crowley re-calibrated. “I’ll come up and sit outside the door. Would that be all right?”

“Yes. That’d be all right.”

*

It really was _quite stupid indeed_ that Crowley was sitting in the bedroom outside, but Aziraphale wanted to know where he was. Needed, really. So Crowley was singing again, something about mirrors, while Aziraphale used a nail brush and Nabulsi soap (he was nothing if not a creature of habit) to scrub himself. Normally he’d never need to go so far with human hygiene implements, but today it felt better to do it manually. Physically.

The water was grey; Crowley had miracled the blood away from him, but not the mud or rot. Still, he found himself cleaning his nails for the third time. It wouldn’t do to have blood under his nails the next time he went for a manicure…

Eventually the water was cold, and he had to admit to himself that at this point he would be cleaner getting out. He felt exhausted. He was a thinker; whenever he had a problem, he sat down and _thought_. Pointedly _not thinking_ was really rather difficult.

“Aziraphale?” Crowley said softly through the door. He’d not even realised that the singing had stopped. What kind of guardian was he – Gabriel could have come back and here he was, with time skipping like a girl with a rope-

“Aziraphale?” Crowley said again. “You all right?”

“Fine! Tickety-boo,” Aziraphale said, and winced. “I, um. Rather not put the robe on again. Not that it wasn’t lovely, but…”

“Ah. I took the liberty…” The bathroom door opened a crack, and Crowley held out his clothes. Velvet waistcoat, powder blue shirt, brown trousers. “I’m sorry if there’s any mistakes. Tell me and I’ll fix them. Your boots were Balmorals, right?

Aziraphale took the pile of freshly-manifested clothes. The waistcoat was a little lighter than his old one, and the shirt a little darker. The trousers were softer. He suddenly felt overwhelmed with love – from Crowley, from the clothes, from himself. From himself for Crowley. It shone out in a bright white light. It was like his epiphany when Crowley had saved his books in the bombing of St. Dunstan’s. His Damascus.

And then the light guttered out. The clothes fell from his hands in a heap on the wet bathroom tiles and bile rose painfully in his throat.

Because Crowley had watched him with such loving attention that he could create his clothes from memory, and just days ago he had lied to Crowley so that he could report to Gabriel first. Gabriel who had… had…

All he had felt from Crowley all day had been love: worried love, furious love, terrified love, careful love, and that he should realise it so vividly _now_, isolate that feeling _now_, connect it to all of Crowley’s words and tears and offers and pleas over the last week, when Aziraphale was sore and filthy and stupid, so heartlessly, wilfully _stupid_ –

Large patches of black light were bursting in front of his eyes, and all he could hear was the furious buzzing of a swarm of bees, a myriad swarms. Crowley must have asked for him again, because he was now peeking around the door. His eyes were glowing. They lent a sickening yellow texture to the creeping, flashing scintillations in front of his eyes, and the buzzing just grew louder, and louder, and Crowley slipped to the side –


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello all - thank you so much for your comments! I will reply to them in the next day or two; I moved house over the weekend so I'm incredibly behind with work.

Aziraphale surfaced from unconsciousness with all the grace and calm poise with which the Kraken had surfaced two days previously; Crowley caught him as he sat bolt upright, sucking down a deep breath. “Hey, hey! You’re fine, you’re here, it’s all right.”

Aziraphale stared deep into Crowley’s turmeric yellow eyes, and took another breath, far shakier.

Crowley kept his gaze, nodding just a little. “Hi. You’re all right.”

Aziraphale looked around. He was wearing the shirt and trousers which Crowley had manifested for him, and was lying on the dusty, rarely used bed in the flat. Crowley must have moved him. The sky was red and gold and salmon-pink. “Hours…?”

“Yeah,” Crowley said, and Aziraphale saw the lines of anxiety and panic around his mouth.

Without thinking he reached up to cup Crowley’s jaw and smooth them away, then pulled his hand back as though he’d be burnt. “Sorry. I’m sorry.”

“Hnuh. No need. Do, um. Do you remember what you were dreaming about?”

Aziraphale felt a new twist of fear in his stomach. “No. I didn’t have any visions or anything… I was in the bathroom, and you’d- you’d made these for me…”

“Right. Yes. Small mercies.” Crowley scrubbed at his face. “You, um. I know you don’t want to talk about it.”

Aziraphale instantly stiffened and pulled away. “There’s no need. It’s done, it’s… You know. It’s fine. You don’t need to worry, I didn’t let him know about our swap.”

“Oh, right, well, of course that’s all I’d be worried about!” Crowley snapped. He looked away for a long moment, then sat at the foot of the bed.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” Aziraphale said. “I meant… I meant that if you worry then I can’t pretend to be all right.”

“Then _don’t_. Not here. Not with me,” Crowley said, and Aziraphale could see so much _hurt_ on his face.

“Not with you. With me.” Aziraphale shook his head. “I don’t know how to say it. I don’t know… Everything’s so… cracked. Everything in my head is just broken glass.”

Crowley exhaled, and Aziraphale could hear how his breath shuddered. “We don’t need to talk about the physical thing.” Aziraphale immediately looked down, and felt sick with shame and embarrassment. “I think I understand that. You were already feeling a bit… untethered to your body. Discorporation, sharing that woman’s body, Adam making a new one, and then our… our exchange. Yeah?”

“I don’t know.”

“It’s okay. Sometimes when something shitty happens your – and mine, I mean, humans, everyone, general _you_ – mind disconnects a little, from your body. To protect itself. You don’t feel real, you feel like you’re outside yourself watching, that kind of thing.”

Aziraphale nodded slowly. His demotion – he’d been outside his body for that, and had still felt a strange _sundering_ from himself. He’d dispassionately watched his second wing be removed. The burning of Alexandria, he hadn’t even felt the burns on his legs and arms and hands. “But how did he know to do it?” He looked up at Crowley again. “I don’t know if he planned to do it. He was pressing into me… He wanted to search me. Like Raziel did.”

“Raziel? Lord of Secrets Raziel?” Crowley was so pale. “You’ve never told me anything about Raziel…”

That was mostly because Aziraphale never, ever wanted to think about Raziel. Let alone talk about him. He _did_ have some wonderful early copies of the Sefer Raziel HaMalakh, even some of the compositional scraps, but he didn’t read it as often as it deserved.

He didn’t _blame _Raziel, of course. As his name suggested, secrets were his duty. But it didn’t mean he had to _like_ him. “Oh. It was, um. Everyone who’d been on Earth at the same time as Semiaza and his lot. We all had to decorporate and Raziel checked our bodies – you know, psychoscopy. To see if we’d been having sex with any humans. Then he mingled with us to check our memories too.”

“Stop.” It was a quiet command, but as hard as iron. Crowley had got up from the bed. “Heaven uses embracing as an _interrogation technique_?”

Aziraphale was _tired_, and the defence of Heaven was hard-wired into him, automatic. “It was a very particular situation-“

That was as far as he got before Crowley stormed out.

Aziraphale didn’t follow, or call. He didn’t do anything. He just leant against the wall next to his bed. Noticed a few black spots of mould by the window. He was getting better at not thinking.

A few minutes later Crowley came back up. He was still frowning, nostrils flared in anger, but without a word he handed Aziraphale a mug of hot chocolate.

Ah. Angry, but not with him. The mug warmed his fingers. “It wasn’t…” He didn’t know what Crowley wanted him to say, and then realised that Crowley wanted the _truth_ before anything. “It hurt,” he admitted.

Crowley’s voice was carefully gentle. “You didn’t tell me.”

“I thought you were already angry at us. Angry at me. The Flood.”

“Yeah. Well. I was.”

“So was I.” Aziraphale refused to look up from the hot chocolate. “I don’t think I’ve ever said that before.”

“You haven’t,” Crowley confirmed. “I’d have remembered.”

Aziraphale winced. He deserved the reproach. He remembered the floating bodies, grey and bloated… And Gabriel, ultraviolet, raking through it-

The hot chocolate burnt his front; Crowley cleared the stain with a wave of his hand. He looked terribly, devastatingly worried.

“I don’t know what I was…” Aziraphale, and that frightened him. Losing track of his thoughts.

“Raziel,” Crowley said. His face was like a wax death mask. “I won’t be angry. Look, very calm. Very Zen. So Raziel mingled with you, and the others, to see if you were in on Semiaza’s thing?”

Aziraphale nodded. A set question. That was easier. “Yes. So… So Gabriel knew that it was possible. To access memories in a mingling, as well as feelings.” He sipped the hot chocolate; Crowley must have cooled it to the perfect temperature, and it was sweet and creamy. “He was pressing my chest. Reaching in. But the body’s a natural barrier; you have to go past all the blood and electricity and air and chemicals and everything. Obstacle of membrane, joint and limb…”

“So he wanted to get you out,” Crowley said. “He was trying to make you decorporate?”

“I think at first it was just more touch. That’s why he vanished our clothes. More touch, more surface area…” Aziraphale put the mug down on the bedside table, very carefully. He couldn’t bear to look at Crowley. “But what he could sense was how scared I was. Maybe I gave him the idea myself. You and I have seen it, seen the aftermath, seen bodies and- I don’t know, Gabriel was at Sodom, maybe he knew from them what they wanted, maybe that’s what- What if I gave him the idea?”

Crowley scoffed. “You can learn about something and not immediately decide to do it. Fuck, look at the Inquisition in Spain. And you didn’t have an overwhelming urge to run around France with a guillotine, did you?”

Aziraphale sighed out. It wasn’t a laugh, wasn’t even a huff of amusement, but it was an acknowledgement. “I suppose not.”

“So if it went through your head because you were both naked and he spotted it, or whether he knew about it from Sodom, or whatever he gets up to whenever he’s down here, that’s on him. He decided to do it.”

“He knew it would scare me. That it scared me,” Aziraphale said to the bedside lamp. “Maybe that’s why he decided on it. If I’d been scared that he’d stab me…”

“You can heal a stab wound if you get to it quickly enough,” Crowley said thoughtfully. “And… And if you _died_, then you’d go up to Heaven, wouldn’t you?”

Aziraphale finally looked back at him. “I suppose so…”

“So he wanted to do something painful and terrifying to your body without the risk of accidentally killing you.” Crowley’s nostrils were flared again, but he was holding himself still with such care that Aziraphale could see him vibrating.

“I don’t know if it makes it better or worse, if it was… a tactic,” Aziraphale said.

“Don’t think about it. Doesn't matter. Either way he’s a fucking psychopath.”

“I _knew_ that’s what he wanted. For me to decorporate. I knew he wanted to find out how we’d survived. I buried it as deep as I could. I knew he wanted me to decorporate and I tried so hard not to let go.”

“I know.”

“I held on as long as I could.”

“I _know_,” said Crowley.

Aziraphale wanted to wipe his eyes, but they were completely dry. He began to scratch roughly at his neck instead. “But I… He was so fast. As soon as I was out he embraced me.” His body _ached_ with how stiffly he held it. The only relief was the blooming red on the side of his neck. “He was like a bull in a china shop. Fire in a book shop.”

Crowley reached out, snake-fast, and caught his scratching hand. Aziraphale looked in his eyes, and saw his own wild despair mirrored there.

Crowley’s chin was wobbling. “… I’m trying to understand.”

“I know. I don’t know how to explain it. It was like… Like I was in a fire. Tied to a stake, and they’d set the torch to the kindling. And if I thought about _fire_, you’d _die_,” Aziraphale choked. “All he wanted was to know how I’d survived the hellfire. So I threw everything else I could think of at him. I let him feel everything I was feeling. Eating at the Ritz. Oysters. Incense in Heian-Kyo. Tej in Aksum. Young Warlock picking flowers for you. Crying – when I cried in Egypt. All those children, all those… The Israelite children, then the Egyptian children, and… Alexandria, and the burns. That shekhar we had in Caesarea Maritima. _Hamlet_ – you saying, you remember, your treat… The scriptoria, and Florence, and Nostradamus and babysitting John in that little cave and taking his dictation – his Greek was really wretched, and it wasn’t even the mushrooms, he was the same sober… Our fight. Those things I said, that I didn’t even like you. The unforgivable…”

He still couldn’t cry. He wished he could; he wished he could wash some of the shame and self-loathing from himself, but he didn’t deserve to feel clean.

He bit his lip, and shook his head. “Whatever I gave him he tore to shreds, or shattered, or stamped, and he was always pushing deeper. As fast as I could bury it. So in the end I took it in and gave him everything else. He knows everything else about me. Every rotten, shameful thing, and every joy, and every… everything I feel. For God, for him, for Heaven. Earth. For you. He saw it all and I could feel his hatred. I could feel how… powerful it made him feel. And he could feel how, well. How useless and pitiful I felt. How stupid.”

Crowley’s sclera were completely yellow. Aziraphale took a deep breath. “I’m sorry, my dear, I’m upsetting you.”

Crowley stared at him. “Aziraphale, are you _shitting me_?”

“No, your eyes only- you’re _upset_-“

Crowley was up again. He clenched his hands in fists, and then stretched his fingers again. “I need a drink.” He didn’t make a move for the door though, and instead sat back down on the bed.

He raised a finger. “I am upset. And right now, it is irrelevant. All right?”

“It’s not irrelevant. I hate upsetting you.”

“You’re not. You’re being honest. That’s good. Please. Keep being honest.”

“God, it’s hard,” Aziraphale said, and wished that Crowley would storm away and smash something or pour them both drinks and agree to put a pin in the conversation. “I’ll just- All right. Quick as I can. I focused on the memory of what it felt like. The physical. Him in me, I mean. How scared I was, how ashamed, how in pain. He liked that. He was angry that we’d humiliated him and he wanted to do the same to me. He took the bait, dragged us back in, I discorporated him with the rock. Then you came. That’s it. All we need to talk about.”

Crowley sighed out. “Okay. I’m sorry. I’m really, really sorry, Aziraphale, but we still- If he knows that you were keeping it from him, he’s going to try again.”

“Oh, _God,_” Aziraphale moaned, and this time he was the one to stand. His legs felt weak beneath him, and the world seemed strangely distorted. “I tried to… I hoped that with all the carnage he wouldn’t be able to see that there was a secret at all. Knowing that a secret exists means it’s not a secret anymore. I told him we had no idea how we survived. If he thinks he didn’t find it because there was nothing to find…”

“Angel, sit down,” Crowley said, and suddenly his hands were on his shoulders again. “You’re going to faint, you need to sit.”

“I won’t _faint_. Angels don’t _faint._”

“Maybe wounded ones do.”

“I’m not wounded, I healed myself,” Aziraphale snapped.

“Humour me.” Crowley pressed him back by the shoulders onto the bed, and took three steps back. “You fainted before. If there’s damage to your essence then I can't heal it...”

“It’ll be fine. It doesn’t exactly hurt, it just feels a bit... I’ll stitch it up tomorrow.”

“For fuck’s sake – your angelic essence isn’t an _old coat_!” Crowley said. “You don’t… _feel_ well. If you were human I’d say you had a fever or something.”

“Well, I’m not, so I don’t,” Aziraphale said. “I just need to get back into the normal routine. Something to eat and I’ll be fine. I’ll look up a few books and see if there’s anything to protect the shop.”

Crowley looked so tired and frustrated that Aziraphale felt guilty again. “I am _listening_,” he promised Crowley. “I just don’t know… Can we leave it for tonight? I’ve told you everything. Please.”

Crowley didn’t look _happy_ about this, but he had never pushed Aziraphale further than he could reasonably go. “Fine. Fine. But I’m worried that there’s some damage we’re not seeing.” Crowley’s lip trembled, and he looked so _young_ for a second. As vulnerable as he had when he was drunk in that bar on Saturday afternoon. “Something I can’t fix.”

It was unfair to Crowley, to resent this. To feel so exhausted at the thought of giving reassurance. Crowley had done _everything_ today, with all the patience and charity and tactfulness in the world. Aziraphale schooled his own raw and overwhelmed nerves, and smiled. “There won’t be. We’ll work it out, whatever’s happened. I know that we need to have a plan, and work it all out, and we will, but first we need a little clarity and distance. We’ll both feel better downstairs, with a drink and some biscuits.”

“Fine. Yeah.” Crowley sighed, but he didn’t look quite so ready to fall apart at the seams. That, at least, Aziraphale could still do. He was still someone who could soothe and protect, just a little. Not just something that screamed and begged.

He felt his smile grow a little warmer. “Excellent. I think I have some Tunnock’s tea cakes.”

He snapped his fingers to turn the bedroom light out, and the lightbulb exploded in a shower of sparks and glass.


	9. Chapter 9

Aziraphale sat at the table in the back room, staring morosely at the table-cloth. Crowley poured the boiled water into the teapot.

“Right.” He sat down. The pearls of tea gently unfurled. “If you try something simple. Multiplication of the biscuits. Changing the tea to Earl Grey.”

“I don’t want to do this.”

“Aziraphale-“

“It’s _frivolous_.”

“When has that ever bothered you?” Crowley said. He took a calming breath, and tried another tack. “We need to know, don’t we? Can’t have you try to rescue a burning baby from a fire and accidentally transportting the mother in to join it, can we?”

Aziraphale gave him a filthy look.

Crowley held up his hands. “Just being sensible.” He took out a Tunnock’s teacake and placed it on the table. “Multiply it.”

Aziraphale stared at the teacake and blinked. The wrapper turned from red and silver to indicate milk chocolate, to blue and gold for dark.

“Well,” Crowley said, trying to be optimistic. “That’s not too bad.”

Something began to nose its way out of the foil wrapper.

“Egad!” Aziraphale cried, which normally would have provided Crowley with a month’s ammunition; instead he vanished it before either of them could find out exactly what that teacake was hatching into.

Aziraphale was flapping his hands, shaking them as though he was trying to get water off them. He looked helplessly at Crowley.

“I mean, you still have _powers_,” Crowley said. _One_ of them needed to be optimistic about this. “It’s not that you’re human or anything. You’re just… Not thinking straight. Let’s pick something you’re comfortable with, a book repair or-“

“I’m not touching any of my books,” Aziraphale said, and for the first time all day his eyes were red. “I don’t want to try any more, I’m _tired._”

“We just need to know how bad-“

“Why?” Aziraphale lifted his chin as though he was preparing for Crowley to hit him. “Are you planning on going anywhere?”

“No.” Crowley didn’t blink. “Of course not.”

Aziraphale’s face was scrunched up. “Then you can do whatever needs doing. If you’re not planning on going to Alpha Centuri or something. I’m tired.”

“Stop trying to pick a fight, you won’t distract me that way. I’m the king of picking fights to avoid talking about stuff.”

“Oh, I know – just like when instead of saying _thank you_ when I persuaded Shlomoh to let you out of that wineskin you just said that my me’īl looked like it had been embroidered by a horse.”

Crowley held up his finger. “You’re doing it again. I’m not going to be distracted. Your essence has been injured, it’ll probably only get worse if we leave it. Like an infection in a human.”

“Are you suggesting that I have a _venereal disease?_”

“No! Oi! You know I’m not! It’s probably a _wound_ – lots of wounds, he did a number on you!”

“Oh, I see, I just have gangrene of the soul, then.” Aziraphale sniffed haughtily. “Better than celestial syphilis, I suppose.”

Crowley exhaled. “Aziraphale-“

“I don’t _care_. I’m _tired_.”

“Fine. Fine.” Subconsciously, there were certain things Crowley was still bound by, and the rule of three was one of them when he was under this much pressure. “I’ll order some food.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Crowley said, rolling his eyes. He got up. He couldn’t remember the last time Aziraphale had been like this. Lindisfarne, maybe. He looked back. “What about a drink?”

Aziraphale looked up at him, and behind the frown and the pursed lips and the narrowed eyes Crowley just saw terror. “… all right.”

“All right. Wine?”

“Sure.”

Crowley waved his hand, and two glasses of water appeared on the table. “Go on, then.”

Aziraphale picked up one of the glasses. Slowly. He focused, going a little cross-eyed, and the water _changed_. Not into wine, red or white. It turned into what looked like Guinness, with a small layer of foam at the top of the wine-glass.

Aziraphale raised his eyebrows at Crowley, as if to say _Voilà! _He set the glass down, and clasped his hands very tightly on the table. “I want to throw it in your face.”

“Understandable. Thanks for not.”

“Oh, I may yet,” said Aziraphale, but his anger was visibly fading. Nothing replaced it. Crowley would rather have had the fury back.

“You can if you want. Might make you feel better.”

“I think there’s been enough violence for one day,” Aziraphale said primly.

“Ah, it’s not the same.” Crowley rather prided himself on having a drink thrown in his face at least once every century. “Bit of stout. Even if you throw the glass in as a freebie it’s not quite beating someone’s skull in with a rock.”

It wasn’t what Aziraphale’s face did that clued him in. The dead eyes and pale face were rather par for the day’s course. It was the way Aziraphale’s shoulders flattened and then rose that socked Crowley in the gut with the clarity of what he’d just said and what Aziraphale was thinking.

“Nonononono,” Crowley moaned, reaching across the table; Aziraphale didn’t notice his hands at all, and was staring into nothing. “Aziraphale!” Crowley shoved the table to the side instead, and took Aziraphale’s face in his hands.

He was prepared for shock or stunned panic to bleed through Aziraphale’s skin. The memory of adrenaline. Instead he was overwhelmed by _hatred_ and _disgust_ and _betrayal_, and all of pointed inwards. “Please don’t, please, don’t,” Crowley begged. “Look at me. Look at me.”

Aziraphale didn’t. “Never killed anyone before.”

“You _didn’t_. It was just a body, he’s up there, he’s probably feeling better than you are.”

“I still did it. I felt the bone splinter and I just hit him again and again…”

As Aziraphale wouldn’t look at him, Crowley knelt down to stare up instead. “It was self-defence. Anyone would say it was right.”

“_Me antistenai toi poneroi_. Do not stand against the evildoer.”

Crowley wanted to scream. “Then what is the point of _any of this_?! What’s the point of the last _six thousand years_? That’s not even about self-defence, you idiotic angel, that’s about revenge!”

“Turn the other cheek. That poor little girl in Corinaldo-“

“Oh, I have thoughts on that too,” Crowley hissed. “Don’t you _dare_. You did nothing wrong!”

“I tried to kill a child!” Aziraphale shouted at Crowley. “I shot him! The same age as her, and I tried to murder him!”

“Aziraphale.” Crowley’s hands were very firm on Aziraphale’s face. “It was to save _everyone_. Right? We both thought that he was the embodiment of evil. Evil in a human body. Killing him, just like killing Gabriel. Just the body.”

Aziraphale shook his head, or tried to, against Crowley’s hands.

“Adam _knew_,” Crowley said, desperate to find anything that landed. “He forgave us both. He knew why, and he forgave us, and he held our hands. You don’t need any more forgiveness than that, Aziraphale. You took in that piece of- you took in _Gabriel_, so you could be forgiven. If an eleven year old can understand how much you hated it and how we thought it was the only way to save the world, you must be able to as well. Come on. Someone as clever as you.”

“Not clever,” Azirapale said. “Not a good angel, not a good soldier, and now I’m not even- not even soft either. Not even kind and gentle.”

“Angel, please-“

“Don’t call me that!” Aziraphale suddenly cried in anguish. “How can I be an angel without virtue? Without anything good in me? The last thing that I was that... Gabriel said that I was weak, and I thought, well, yes, you're right, but maybe there's some virtue in being soft and gentle, but now I'm not that either. I’m not like you! You’re brave and honest and you’re so kind, even when you shouldn’t be! And I’m- I’m a fool. So stupid. I'm a liar, and a terrible child of God, and a terrible friend. And now I'm a murderer.”

Aziraphale’s eyes were blue, bright turquoise-sea-blue, as they only were when he was at his most upset. Crowley didn’t look away from them. “This is the whole Torah. _You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against your kinsfolk. Love your neighbour as yourself. _Believing Gabriel when he lied to you doesn’t make you stupid, it makes you _good_. He tried to kill us yesterday morning, and yesterday evening you gave him hospitality. You forgave him. You were patient. You tried to teach him. All the way through you stood by your… your friend. You’re not a terrible friend. You’re my best friend. And all of those things are virtues. You know that.”

Aziraphale’s eyes were full of tears. Crowley smiled at him, feeling awkward, feeling wretched and small himself. How could God have so fucked up the world that a demon should be reassuring an angel that he was good? “I’m glad you did it. If he’d discorporated you instead I’d go mad.”

“He wasn’t…” Finally, _fuck, finally_, Aziraphale reached up and touched Crowley’s hand. “It wasn’t because of that. He was going to… He said he’d do it again. Until he found out. I couldn’t let him find us out. I couldn't let him know how to kill you.”

“Then you were saving me,” Crowley said. He turned his hand to take Aziraphale’s and kissed it. Just yesterday he’d said he’d be slow, let Aziraphale set the pace. And then this morning…

But he did it without thinking, and kissed Aziraphale’s palm, which had held a rock and beaten a skull to pulp and shards of bone for him. Aziraphale wouldn’t do it for himself, which is why he’d had to rescue the beloved idiot from the Bastille and St. Dunstan’s – _fools rush in where angels fear to tread_, what a load of gobshite – but for _him_ Aziraphale had been cold and calculating and ruthless. He had been what he hated.

Twice in two days Aziraphale had walked through Hell for him.

He remembered the _Tosca_ that had played on the Bentley’s radio. “O dolci mani mansuete e pure…” he murmured, and through their touching skin he felt Aziraphale’s confusion, then recognition, then understanding. And he was there to hold him when Aziraphale finally wept.

*

It was a long night. They eventually found their way to the sofa; Crowley made Aziraphale lie down on it, and he sat on the floor with his back to it. He brought Aziraphale’s arm over his right shoulder and hugged it like a child with a doll, careful to keep Aziraphale’s right hand in his left.

Whenever he felt the rising tide of Aziraphale’s guilt or horror, or the creeping dread that he was something _violent_ and _cruel,_ Crowley let his own admiration rise up to meet it, or hummed Cavaradossi’s aria until Aziraphale sniffed or laughed or poked his head and told him to stop being silly, to which Crowley made a remark about the pot and the kettle, and Aziraphale’s cruel inner voice quietened down again. 

Aziraphale always coped so much better with other people’s words. Humans’ words. Heaven had told him that he couldn’t trust Crowley’s because he was a demon, and that he couldn’t trust his own because he was defective and weak and whatever else they'd flung at him. While Aziraphale was unlearning all that, quotations helped. The Devil can cite scripture for his purpose. Or Illica and Giacosa if the situation is really desperate.

They’d not seen the opera together when it premiered in London. That had been in 1900, and they’d not been on speaking terms. He knew Aziraphale had been there though, and had seen it several times since, so in 1964 he had surprised him with tickets for the first performance of Zeffirelli’s production with Maria Callas. The ovations for her alone lasted forty minutes. Twenty-seven curtain calls. Crowley had wondered whether he’d accidentally got himself stuck in a time loop, but Aziraphale had stood for every single one, beaming, sometimes wiping his eyes. 

Crowley thought about this, and music, and slowly, carefully, coaxed Aziraphale to sleep. _Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care, the death of each day’s life, sore labour’s bath, balm of hurt minds_ he mentally recited, over and over again, until Aziraphale’s hand was limp in his.

He held Aziraphale’s arm close to his chest but let go of his hand. He wanted to be sure that their skin was not touching.

Because, unlike Aziraphale, Crowley was not averse to violence in the least.

If, in this reassurance, he was Cavaradossi, and Aziraphale Tosca, then that left only one role for Gabriel. _For myself the violent conquest has stronger relish than the soft surrender. _Had he craved, or had it really been a torture, any torture, to force Aziraphale out of his corporation?

Not that it mattered. Crowley was going to kill him anyway.

*

When Aziraphale woke with the sun, Crowley suggested a nice little road-trip. Take their mind off things. And be far away from the bookshop in case Gabriel came calling again. “Just to Tadfield,” he said. “I have an idea.”

There were violet smudges underneath Aziraphale’s eyes, and his words came out strangely slowly, but he looked a little less like a ghost controlling a corpse. “Oh, no. I couldn’t. I can’t face him again.”

“No, no, not him,” Crowley said, though in all honesty he was thinking of talking to Adam if absolutely everything else failed. He didn’t exactly want to be the one to give _that_ talk to an eleven year old, apart from anything else. “Book girl.”

Aziaphale blinked in surprise. “Really? But… why?”

“She’s a witch, isn’t she? She might be able to see more of your aura. Do some healing magic.”

Aziraphale shook his head. “I don’t want to tell anyone else.”

“We won’t. We’ll make something up. Some metaphysical injury. You know humans, they’ll believe anything.” Crowley shifted from one foot to the other. “At least we’d be _trying_ something.”

Crowley saw Aziraphale give a little sigh that he tried to hide, before he did his best to look cheerful and grateful. “All right, my dear.”

“Great,” Crowley said in relief. “Great. I’ll bring a couple of the flasks, just in case.”

He saw Aziraphale take a second, gathering something deep inside him. “My dear,” he said, carefully. The muscles of his throat were tight. “I know she’s an American, but I think that’s going a little too far.”

Crowley could have died of love in that moment. It was Aziraphale, with trembling fingers, making a single stitch of repair in his idea of himself. Silly, and harmless, and a little bit funny, a little bit dry. Soft.

A mind where tea had priority over death. A life where he could trust Crowley to take the burden of violence that had been Aziraphale's birthright from him.

The plea made him so vulnerable, and the vulnerability cost so much courage. With the air of Walter Raleigh spreading his cloak, Crowley rolled his eyes. “The flasks of _hellfire_, angel. _Honestly._”

“Oh, right, of course,” Aziraphale said, with his habitual apologetic _oh-silly-me_ wiggle.

“Bet you’d rather have the hellfire than sugar and ice in your tea.”

“Well, as I’ve said on many occasions, I have standards.”

“Not when it comes to jumpers.”

“Or friends, I suppose.”

“Oh, nice, very nice. You can get out and walk then.”

It was enough to sustain them both to Tadfield. Playing the parts of themselves in their own little production of a tragedy. Giving them just enough scaffolding to stop either of them from falling into ruins within the hour.


	10. Chapter 10

As they left Soho Aziraphale was completely silent.

Crowley was perfectly used to Aziraphale’s silences because they were rarely _actually_ silent. They were always punctuated by little noises which, as a demon, he ought to have found supremely irritating. Shocked inhalations and contented exhalations when he read, humming when he was thinking, the _sotto voce_ _doo-doo-doo _when he made tea. The almost inaudible sigh when he looked at something that made him happy, a painting or a sunset or a couple of ancient men holding hands on a bench. The pigeon-coo at babies with whom he didn’t have to interact for more than three minutes.

_Hm_ for pretended or expected disapproval aimed at Crowley, actually indicating amusement. _Hmm_ for genuine disapproval. _Hmmm_ for disapproval aimed at Heaven. Crowley never pressed the _hmmm_ if he could help it. It meant Aziraphale was already suffering enough.

Chuckling when he was nervous or upset. The quickly caught and culled _ah_ of fear.

But this… this was _silence_.

Aziraphale stabbed the silence as Crowley approached Marylebone Road. “Straight forward here.”

“It’s left for Tadfield.”

“Need to go somewhere else first. Take Hampstead Road.”

“Care to tell me where we’re going?” Crowley asked as he went straight on. Because of course he did.

“Crouch End.”

“Crouch End?” Crowley let the Bentley take over so he probably convey to Aziraphale just how little he liked this destination. “The only person we know in Crouch End is _him_.”

“Not him. Her.”

“Urgh,” said Crowley, and sped through a red light. “I hate that the first assenting body you could find in England was Sergeant Bloody Shadwell’s next-door neighbour. It all feels so… It’s got _Her_ fingerprints all over it.”

Normally Aziraphale would have perked up at this. Crowley had been half-hoping to prompt a boring, morally dubious lecture about ineffability and faith and all the rest of that shit.

Instead the angel just stared out of the window.

*

_Honestly_, Madame Tracy thought as she came down the stairs. She’d removed the sticker and phoned up all her regulars. She tried to remember how many phone boxes she’d left cards in, and realised she had no idea where to even _find_ the nearest phone box.

She’d been expecting poor old Mr. Alter, who’d never been the same after his wife died, or possibly Mr. Wright, who swore blind every time that this would be the last time, and so never made an appointment in advance. She always charged him double for the inconvenience, which amounted to a pretty penny with the number of times he’d visited her for the last time.

Well, no more. She was retired now.

Though maybe she’d have one last time of her own if he didn’t want any outfits or touching. Buyers’ fees, even on bungalows, could be extortionate.

What she _hadn’t_ been expecting was – “Mr Aziraphale!” she said, with genuine pleasure. “And you’ve brought your young man!”

Mr Aziraphale’s young man was not _young_, technically or otherwise, but having come to know Mr Aziraphale really quite intimately she still felt her heart skip a beat and a flutter behind her hips at the sight of him. Those _cheekbones_, and the lithe lines of him, and the slight shadow of hair on his chest that made her think of what his abdomen would look like, and the way he was standing so _still_…

In her line of business, she was far more used to bestowing attention. She was the facilitator. But the attention of this man on her really would be something.

Not something she could endure forever. Not even for a day, in all likelihood. But as far as fantasies went…

She didn’t know how many of these thoughts were hers and how many were the angel’s. She only knew that he was a rake and a cad who would ravish innocent virgins, and also a tender protector, and also a dashing, laughing hero, and also a mystic and a poet, and also so wonderful with children, and also a soft-voiced woman who could comfort with a whip and discipline with a smile-

That last one was very odd. If she’d still been in the business, she’d have liked a conversation with _Crowley_.

She always thought of him with that name. _Crowley_, shaped by her lips with such relief, and the ache of love in the back of her throat.

The memory made her clear it, and she held out her hand for Mr Aziraphale to kiss; he did, with a bow which managed to lack any sarcasm and irony, as she’d known he would. “Come up, come up, have a cup of tea. How do you take yours, Mr. _Crowley_?”

“One sugar if you have it, though if you have any coffee…”

“I can do coffee if you don’t mind Nescafe,” she said. She knew with Mr. Aziraphale’s knowledge that it wasn’t his favourite, but it would do.

They’d got along quite well, she and Mr. Aziraphale, given the terror and strangeness of the situation. Their ideas of what was chic and fashionable both gravitated towards the 1950s, for a start. They were both kind, and made efforts to be so. They could agree on the comfort of rituals, and the understanding that people needed a little hint of magic in their lives to make the world bearable. They were both vain, and a little dishonest and manipulative, and they wanted things that it was improper or incomprehensible to want. And underneath their genuine appreciation for softness and prettiness and silliness each had a core of steel.

What was most interesting was that she’d seen none of this from him at the beginning of their _co-habitation_. All she had felt from him was desperation, and fear, and a feral, wild-eyed determination which had suggested, in light of her intuition, her psychological nous, and her many years of experience, that he was a single dropped mug from a complete mental breakdown.

And just like all of her clients who came to her begging for her to flog them, to choke them with a chain and order them to bow and grovel and call them disgusting and filthy and unlovable, unlovable, unlovable, she knew that before anything else, she would make him a cup of tea, and sit down, and listen.

He no longer looked one dropped mug from a mental breakdown. He looked one spilt drop of water from a full psychotic break.

She let them into the flat, and Shadwell leapt up from the sofa. As well he might, knowing what she now did about his shenanigans. “Mr S, you go on through to yours for an hour, then we’ll have lunch.”

“Ah’m not leaving ye alone with these two demons!” Shadwell said. Mr. Aziraphale jerked like he'd just been whipped, and she suddenly saw the very sexy murder side of Mr. Crowley that she’d not seen much evidence of until then.

“Don’t be an absolute silly,” she said. “Behave. Go on. Or I won’t let you back in.”

That worked, and Shadwell slunk out of the flat with a Vantablack glare for the two guests.

“I wondered, actually,” said Mr. Aziraphale, with a tremulous voice, “whether we might be able to chat in private?”

This surprised both Tracy and Crowley; the former recovered first, with professional aplomb. “Of course, petal. Mr. Crowley, can you carry these things through and make a cuppa for yourself and Mr. S? There’s a love.”

She noticed how both of them reacted to the pet-names. Mr. Crowley started, and she instinctively knew that behind his silly glasses his eyes would be wide. Surprise.

Mr. Aziraphale instantly looked down and away. Guilt.

*

Crowley carried the mugs and Nescafe through to the flat across the way. He dumped them on the table, lounged on the sofa, and took out his phone.

Shadwell spoke up. “The kettle’s-“

“You have balls, Sergeant Shadwell, I’ll give you that,” said Crowley, not looking up from his phone. “But you won’t after the next word you utter.”

*

Madame Tracy poured the milk and settled down into her chair. Aziraphale sat in his like it had a pin on it and he was too polite to mention it. “Now, Mr. Aziraphale. As lovely as it is to see you again, I get the feeling there’s something you want to talk about.”

“Is it?”

God, he looked terrible. “Is it what?”

“Lovely? To see me?”

This might be beyond the limits of her tea, handcuffs and endearments. If it had been a bid for affection that would have been perfectly normal, perfectly easy to deal with. What shook her is that he was asking for _her_, not for himself.

She put her mug down. “Of course it is. We said we’d go out for dinner, didn’t we? But this is nice first, having some tea. Chat on our own.”

“Yes,” said Aziraphale, in as blatant a lie as she’d ever witnessed (and she was used to being the one dealing them). “I wished to talk about… if you’d rather have your gentleman in here I’d understand. If you’d feel safer.”

“Safer.” She scraped the top layer of treacle off her voice. “Safer, Aziraphale?”

This finally made him look up at her. “If you feel unsafe.”

“Bit late for all that. It was nearly the end of the world, if I remember correctly. I’m a big girl, come on.”

The angel took a deep breath. “I have been worried. About my- About entering your body.”

Madame Tracy laughed. It was an automatic reaction more than anything, but it was _hilarious_, in a way. It must have been very strange for an angel to share the body of, well, a painted Jezebel (retired). “Oooh, Mr Aziraphale,” she said with a grin and a wiggle, because there are some things you can’t resist.

She thought it would make him relax, make him laugh at himself, break the ice a little.

Instead he looked like he was about to throw up.

It was liked being doused in cold water. She’d thought they’d got along very well; she’d not felt any disgust for her from him. She straightened up. “Ah. I see.”

“No, no, my dear lady –“ He reached across the table, and then pulled his hand back. “I mean- Oh, I don’t know how to… I. You. You were unwilling. I entered you, and you were unwilling.”

“Oh!” Madame Tracy said, and sighed out. “Oh, you poor silly. I wasn’t _unwilling_. Oh, what a relief. I’m a medium! It's the entire job description!”

He looked up at her, and he looked so _distraught_ that she pulled a lace handkerchief out of her bra. “Here. Is that’s what been on your mind, love?”

He took the handkerchief and pressed it to his eyes. “You were _angry_.”

“I was angry because it had never worked before! I don’t like unexpected things.” She studied him. “I don’t like feeling out of control.”

He looked shyly back at her. “I can understand that…”

“I thought you might. Now.” She leant across the table. “Why don’t you tell me what happened, from your point of view?”

Aziraphale sniffed. “I. I found Crowley, but I couldn’t see him. No physical eyes, you see, so you can’t… I’d never been on Earth without a body before – my body. It exploded, when your Sergeant Shadwell came into my bookshop, and they wanted me to take over my platoon, and I thought, demons can occupy someone else’s body, so perhaps I could as well.”

Marjorie Potts had been to Sunday School as a child. She’d even made her First Holy Communion, once upon a time. Between that and having seen _The Exorcist_, Madame Tracy was something of an expert in demonology. “A possession. Like hijacking a car? Or like in the films, where the police show their badge and drive off after the baddy. Oh, or in a taxi, you know. ‘Follow that car’!”

“Yes, quite, well, sort of. I didn’t want to _hijack_ anyone. I didn’t want to hurt anyone. Some people have more… space, in their minds. I don’t mean that they’re stupid – just that they’re more open. Dreaming, usually. Much rarer in someone who’s awake. I went to someone on a vision quest in Australia, what do they call it, a walkabout? I met one fellow who was trying to make a zombie in Haiti. There was an absolutely _awful_ man pretending to do a faith healing in America… And then there was you. Your mind was open.”

“You mean every time I’ve done a séance,” Madame Tracy said slowly. “I really was… _communing_?”

“I don’t know about every time. It might be that the magical energies of the Apocalypse had heightened your own latent psychic abilities.”

Madame Tracy sat up straight. She might have put the red wig and the false lashes away, but she had never felt so exotic. “_Really_?”

She remembered herself and smiled. “So it sounds to me, from what you’ve said, you weren’t picking the first body you saw and saying ‘follow that car’. It sounds more like you were hitch-hiking rather than hijacking.”

Intellectually she knew that the man opposite her was thousands of years old and had magic powers to boot, but he was looking at her so _hopefully_. He made her think of a lost child, taking the hand of the first motherly woman he spotted.

Her own tea was lukewarm, but sweet and milky. She took a sip while she thought. “Think of it like houses instead of cars. It’s like you were running down the street calling for help. And all the doors were closed. The world’s ending, and you’re all alone, and everyone’s got their door locked. Then you see mine, and it’s wide open, and there’s a sign on the front saying ‘Come on in!’ It might have been a general invitation, but it was one. I was just tetchy because I was in the middle of something and you started ranting at my clients.”

The angel was looking up and away and blinking. “Use the hanky, love, it’s all right. No judgement in here. That’s written on the door too,” she promised. This time Aziraphale hid his face in the material, and his shoulders were stiff and still. “It’s really been worrying you, hasn’t it?”

The angel nodded, face veiled.

“Well. It mustn’t anymore. I don’t really remember much of it, for some reason, but it felt like… It felt like you were my guest. Not that I was yours, does that make sense? And it was an adventure. I was… _important_. I’ve never been important in my life.”

“Of course you are.”

“Oh, yes, in an _every life is important_ way, but I mean _really_. It was terrifying, obviously, but I almost enjoyed it. Does that sound strange?”

“No. A coping mechanism, I expect. Adrenaline, clarity… Everyone reacts in different ways.”

“That’s it. What a way to go! And you were lovely. Ever so polite.”

“But even if I was asking for help, even if you did let me in, there was no way you could have understood the stakes or the danger I was leading you into!”

“That’s just _life_. You weren’t controlling me. After all, I didn’t let you – you know. That boy. I remember that.”

“And you saved us all by stopping me,” Aziraphale said, still behind the hanky, and his shoulders shook.

“I knew you didn’t want to. You hated it. But you thought you had to for everyone else.”

“I just wanted to do the right thing. I’ve only ever wanted… But something is still wrong even if it’s done for the good of- I’ve never _possessed_ someone before, I don’t even know how upsetting it must have been for you-“

She put on her _discipline_ face. “Mr. Aziraphale. You have to remember, in my other line of work. Former other. I actually dealt quite a lot in things like consent. I’d have quickly told you if I wasn’t consenting, I can promise you that.”

She nodded very firmly, and waited for Aziraphale to give a tiny movement of the head in return. “There you are, then. No more of that. You need to accept someone’s _yes_ as well as their _no_, you know. You’re ever so scrupulous, but I’ve found as the years have gone on that our own choices are more than enough for each of us to carry. No need to carry everyone else’s as well.”

He _stared_ at her, and Tracy was sure she could feel the love he was pouring out on her, even though he looked so unsure and scared.

She reached across the table and took his hand. “As for the other side of the control and consent thing… I’m retired from that line of work, but if you ever want some pointers for when you and your _Crowley_ stop being so silly about it all, I’ll be happy to help out as a consultant. Remember it’s sugar _and_ spice that make things nice.” She winked, and Aziraphale _blushed_. “And before you deny it, remember that I could feel everything you felt. Not just about having to shoot that boy. I could feel all the pain, and all the years. And all that love.”


	11. Chapter 11

Aziraphale actually looked better when Madame Tracy’s “Coo-ee, Mr Crowley!” summoned him back across the hall. There was a little colour in his cheeks, and he voluntarily made eye contact and gave Crowley a watery smile. He even ate two bourbons – the first thing he’d eaten since the forest.

Crowley felt a deep, dark hurt, that this mortal woman had been able to give Aziraphale some comfort where he hadn’t.

He swallowed it, of course, though it tasted like bile. He managed not to kill anyone as Aziraphale and the woman made earnest promises to meet for lunch, and tried to summon some gratitude for whatever she’d said that made Aziraphale breathe a little more easily.

Not very hard, it must be said.

“Right,” he said as he turned the key in the ignition. “Tadfield.”

He jumped when Aziraphale put his hand on his, over the gear stick.

“Can we not? Not today?” Aziraphale asked. “If I’m still not working properly tomorrow then we can go. But not today.”

Crowley could feel a tired numbness seeping through his skin, but it felt… a little clearer. That was the only reason he so easily acquiesced. “All right.” Did Aziraphale want time to process, or to be distracted? Crowley knew that he would prefer the latter, every time. “Let’s do something though. Why don’t we go to the cinema?”

Crowley liked the cinema. It was dark and quiet, but he was rarely alone, and he could sit surrounded by humans and not actually have to _interact_ with them, just sit and experience the same thing as them, and be distracted by something larger than life. Anything involving heists or cons or missions to save the world. Daring rescues. Car chases.

An interesting thought, but one which Crowley had absolutely no intention of ever engaging with.

Aziraphale hated all the fun films. Aziraphale wasn’t a big cinema fan, Crowley knew, but he went from time to time. Perhaps he was just so grateful for the reprieve from having his aura poked that the cinema seemed acceptable.

Crowley tried to think of what film would suit the occasion. Comedy, probably, but an older one. The last film that he could remember he and Aziraphale seeing in the cinema together had been _Lawrence of Arabia –_ “Ned would be _so_ excited by all this fuss, though then of course he’d run off to join the Navy or something, he was worse than _you_” – which was obviously instantly and forcefully put in the NO category.

He was flipping through the mental catalogue of boring documentaries that Aziraphale would like when the angel suddenly said, “When was the last time you possessed someone?”

“Er,” said Crowley. “Body-sharing possession, or the special attention possession?”*

“Body-sharing.”

“Not for ages. 1600s? They used to give me a quota of five per century but I haggled them down to one.”

“Yes. I thought, I hadn’t exorcised you from anyone for a long time.”

“Always stung like-“ Crowley had been about to say _stung like buggery_ and saved himself at the last second by saying “like bfhaurgjk”.

“Oh, like bfhaurgjk,” said Aziraphale. “That _does_ sound very painful.”

“Oh, it is,” Crowley said, thinking, _bastard. You bastard. I love you._

*One of the difficulties in working across many centuries in hundreds of languages is that sometimes conceptualisations don’t translate exactly. During the whole Athenian democracy experiment, the Greeks started getting ideas about the spirit and the body being separate things. As humans’ beliefs about themselves had a habit of affecting the reality of their natures, this had introduced a crack in between the two into which a demon could crawl and curl up and create all sorts of mischief. Every minor demon could suddenly wreak havoc on Earth whether they’d been assigned a body or not.

Until this, special demonic attention had usually been given from the outside, at least in Crowley’s neck of the woods. The neck was where he preferred to base himself, on that note; he could curl up, invisible, around whomever he was meant to be tempting or corrupting, and whisper in their ear. Easy to strangle someone from there when he was annoyed as well. Other demons had hovered or loomed. And then bloody mind-body dualism had resulted in a rash of possessions, which of course meant that Heaven exponentially increased the number of exorcisms Aziraphale was ordered to perform. Aziraphale had been snitty about it for years, as though _Crowley_ had had anything to do with it.

*

Crowley made sure that the cinema was playing a wholesome documentary about children’s education in Bangladesh. Aziraphale had fallen asleep half-way through.

This was worrying. Aziraphale didn’t sleep.

But, then again, neither did he faint, or turn water into Guinness, or make Tunnock’s teacakes come alive. The darkness of the cinema _did _make aura-viewing easier though, so Crowley squinted at him.

Technically, angels didn’t have auras. They had halos – beaming and brilliant manifestations of holiness and power. Any psychic who tried looking at it without giving the angel warning to turn it down would have their eyes burnt out of their skull (if they looked at a demon, most would tear their eyeballs out themselves). So as part and parcel of the human body, angels and demons could tune themselves in to a slightly different frequency, and manifest an aura as their default instead.

Aziraphale’s aura was, to human eyes, very halo-like anyway. It was bright, very bright, extending several inches from his body; more, if he was looking at a fat baby or a small dog or a cake or a particularly rare and expensive book. It was white, tinged with royal blue at its edges, like a full moon on a clear night.

Not now. Now it was a grubby grey, lingering like a dirty fog around Aziraphale’s head, like fingers of mist in his hair. The only colour that Crowley could see now was ultraviolet: jagged, oozing scratches of it.

Well, fuck.

When the film ended he dug his elbow into Aziraphale’s side and the angel had the bloody cheek to say he enjoyed it immensely.

Aziraphale didn’t sleep, but Crowley did, and he hadn’t slept for weeks in the run-up to Armageddon. He sprawled on Aziraphale’s sofa as the angel locked up the bookshop on Tuesday evening, which involved a knife and chalk and several books as well as a key, and woke up with a blanket tucked around him.

The bookshop was bright with sunlight, sparkling with dust motes. It was quiet – no customers, just Aziraphale in his chair, with a mug of tea, reading _The Dream of the Red Chamber_. He was wearing his pale cardigan, and he’d dug out another bow tie (Crowley hadn’t trusted himself to remember the tartan pattern); this one was Liberty print of blue paisley.

“Ah,” Aziraphale said with a smile. “Good morning, my dear. The kettle’s just boiled, if you’d like some coffee.”

Crowley flung the blanket off, and gracelessly kicked it away from his feet. “You should have woken me!”

“There was no need. No angels, no demons, no humans. It’s been quiet as the grave, apart from your snoring. And you were exhausted, poor thing.”

“Still! You still should have woken me!”

“Oh, Crowley, for _what_?” Aziraphale fixed him a look over his little glasses. “I told you. I’m fine.”

“Bullshit. What have you been doing?”

“Reading.”

“Reading what?”

“Books.”

Crowley resisted the intense desire to give him the finger. “You let me sleep all afternoon and all night, just to avoid talking to me, so don’t give me any of the dense innocent angel shtick. We’re still going to Tadfield today, so you’re going to have to talk eventually.” Aziraphale looked guilty. The angel was much better at orientating himself in space, but Crowley had the advantage on him when it came to time. “Wait. Is it Wednesday morning? Angel. What day is it?”

He _saw_ Aziraphale consider lying. “Saturday.”

Crowley pointed his finger at Aziraphale, but was too angry to find the words to speak. Too angry, and too scared. The thought of Aziraphale, alone with his thoughts, for nearly four days. Four days should have been nothing to them, but Aziraphale was too calm, too still. His face had taken on that terrible wax-work look again, and his eyes were like glass. Every emotion shoved down deep and locked tight. 

“Done any miracles in all that time?” he finally asked silkily. Aziraphale’s silence told him all it needed to. “Right. We’re going to the witch.”

“What’s she going to able to do that either of us can’t? She can see auras, _perhaps_, but so can you!”

“She’s psychic, her great-whatever-granny was the most accurate prophet who ever lived. You said it yourself. She might be able to see something that either of us can’t. She might have seen something similar. Because-” Crowley squinted again. “Your aura’s getting _worse_.”

“She’s an _American._” Aziraphale looked supremely unimpressed. “What’ll she be able to do that I can’t do myself? Burn some sage? Charge a piece of rose quartz with _positive energies_?”

“Normally I’d love the bitchiness, but we’re clearly missing something, so, witch girl it is. Maybe she’ll let you look at her book again.”

“Oh, so now we’re not just going to witches for help, we’re going to _dead_ witches,” Aziraphale said, but he looked a little more mollified at the thought of consulting a _book_ instead. “I don’t think Agnes said a thing about this.”

“You were busy looking for Apocalypse clues. Maybe you overlooked something.”

“To be perfectly honest, the thought of that book having an answer is worse than it not having one.”

“We need to fix you."

"I'm _fine_," Aziraphale said, and something flashed across his eyes. Something alive, but feral with pain.

They'd saved the world together. They'd faced down Heaven and Hell. _It wasn't meant to be like this. _"We need to get you better,” Crowley said. There was heat in his voice. There was heat in his throat, and his nose, and the corners of his eyes. He tried to ignore it. “I’ll bet you. If you can ring the shop bell, we’ll stay here. If you can’t, we’re going to Tadfield.”

“Oh, for Heaven’s sake – of course I can _ring the shop bell_-“

“Do it, then,” Crowley said, unblinking. “Go on. Ring it.”

“I’m not a performing dog.”

“Not doing it's a forfeit. You know the rules.”

“What _rules?_ This is barely a bet, this is a _dare_.”

“And in all the time I’ve known you, you’ve never backed out of a dare.”

“I ignore your dares all the time.”

“Not when it mattered,” Crowley said. This wasn’t entirely true, and they both knew it, but some wounds were too fresh to open in that moment. Not when Aziraphale couldn’t ring a damn bell.

Aziraphale glared at him. He exhaled sharply.

The shop bell did not ring. Instead, the gramophone began to play; the needle dropped, and it raked across the record with a shriek.

*

All her life, Anathema had had a Destiny. She was going to be the Girl at the End of the World.

She was going to try to save it. Unlike most idealistic and intelligent young women who watch the news and feel called upon to Save the World, she at least had been given some instructions, even if they were obscure. And if you were going to be raised as the Omega Point of an apocalyptic cult, it was always nicer to do it as a multi-millionaire in Malibu.

Now the World had been Saved. And it still seemed pretty shitty. _And_ she had burnt whatever other instructions Agnes had given her on how to lead the rest of her life.

She felt free. And the freedom was terrifying.

Newt still hadn’t left Tadfield, for which she was increasingly grateful. She knew that if she said the word, he’d be gone. But she didn’t.

Like her, Newt had had a Destiny. Unlike her, he’d never known it. He’d just spent his entire life with a rubbish curse that ostracised him from modern existence.

Then the rubbish curse had helped to Save the World, and now the World was Saved, and still pretty shitty by the looks of it, and Newt was once again ostracised from it by the very thing that had saved the whole ungrateful planet from nuclear obliteration.

Newt hadn’t found any of this terrifying. When Anathema had explained it in high-pitched desperation, he’d accepted it with the same bemused serenity with which he’d accepted the existence of angels and demons and witches and aliens and antichrists and all the rest. “Yeah, it’s pretty sad. I love computers,” he said, pulling her onto his lap. “Do you maybe want to… God, you’re so lovely. I can’t believe how hot you are. Do you fancy…?”

The obliteration of the rest of his life didn’t seem very important to him. The impossibility of his vocation, their new understanding of heaven and hell, the vast unknown of his future… None of it seemed particularly _important_ to him, not in the way Anathema understood importance. Importance meant intensity and preparation and contingencies and cross-referencing.

The only thing he treated as important was kissing her, staring at her, making love to her. It was pathetic, she couldn’t even think of it as _fucking_, he was so bloody excited and earnest and adoring. It would have been suffocating from almost anyone else, but Newt was never overbearing – God, the thought of it!

He was awkward, but he was funny. She’d wanted tall, dark and handsome, but he was _cute_ instead. He made Anathema, who’d gone to college at the age of fourteen, feel suave and sociable. His calm if confused acceptance was strangely intoxicating for someone whose entire life had been one of pressure and restriction and dread.

She didn’t know if he was the dumbest person she’d ever met, or the wisest. She just knew that he made her feel safe. For the first time in her life she felt loved for who she was, not for what she was predicted to do.

At Saturday lunchtime a week after the World should have ended, they were lying in her bed, talking about Newt’s job prospects. He was thinking about some kind of computer troubleshooter that helped pinpoint bugs in machines. Anathema pointed out that a machine could be working flawlessly and it would still break.

“Yeah, you’re right,” Newt said, gazing at her in open admiration.

“You know what you should do?” She propped herself up on her elbow. “We should go on Greenpeace boats and get you into oil rigs and things. Shut down all the computers, stop them drilling. You’re the perfect saboteur.”

“Yeah?” He grinned at her. “You want to go on a boat with me?”

Anathema rolled her eyes and kissed him. “Idiot,” she said fondly. “I should have said that _between us _we’d be the perfect saboteur….”

“Ooh, go on, talk more about what you want between us,” Newt said, and laughed when Anathema shoved his shoulder.

The doorbell rang. Anathema stiffened in his arms. She wasn’t used to the pain of the unexpected or the fear it evoked.

Newt held her tightly for a long moment, and kissed her hair. “It’s all right. Probably just the papers. Glad we don’t have to do that every morning.” He kissed her again. “I’ll get it, you stay here. Do you want some tea?”

Anathema breathed out, and nodded, and watched Newt put on her dressing gown to at least _suggest_ some propriety.

Then Newt called up. “Anathema!”

*

“Hi,” said the demon. He looked like the Doctor if he’d dumped the TARDIS after discovering death metal and had just come off a four-day bender.

He was with the angel who looked like a professor from _Brideshead Revisited, _and who had also just come off a four-day bender.

Newt couldn’t remember anything more about them other than that they were an angel and a demon. He definitely couldn’t remember their names. He didn’t remember much of the airbase after he’d broken the computers… It was all a hazy blur, with the odd flash of lightning or stab of fear, and then he and Anathema had been drinking gin on the floor of her kitchen and snogging.

“Hi,” he said back. “Um. The world’s not ending again, is it?”

“No, no, dear boy,” said the angel. “We just have to ask your lovely lady a question and then we’ll on our way in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.”

“No, we won’t,” said the demon, and stepped inside.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wishing a meaningful and peace-bringing fast to everyone fasting today!

Anathema objected to being called ‘Book Girl’ and ‘Witch Human’, so it was after a round of introductions that they sat down in the kitchen. Newt immediately began making tea and ran into the obstacle of her lacking the necessary ingredients and accoutrements; the demon, Crowley, waved his hand, and whatever was needed for the British ritual was magically in her cupboard. She let them get on with it: it apparently gave the three men (-shaped beings? The three Brits, whatever) a measure of comfort, like all good rituals should.

There was a whole liturgy of sugar and milk and green or black and a brief ramble from the angel, Aziraphale, about tisanes. Anathema didn’t know who was more nervous of the four of them. In Crowley she recognised a kindred spirit; they both hid their nerves with attitude, sneering, glaring, sarcasm, smiles that showed a few too many teeth. Just like Newt and Aziraphale chatted inanities and gave the impression of being 75% somewhere else.

“So,” Anathema said, when they were finally all settled with cups. “How can we help?”

“You can see auras, right?” said Crowley. “Can you describe his to him? Turn the halo down, angel.”

“All right. If I can ask about halos and auras later…” She focused her mind, and squinted. Murky grey surrounded Aziraphale, like wisps and shreds of torn grey silk. On the edges was an invisible light – something purple, something that she knew was glowing but that her eyes could not see…

She put her glasses back on. She had a pounding headache. “It’s a mess. It’s… it looks like something’s torn it apart.”

Neither looked surprised by this. “_’I told you so’_?” Aziraphale suggested.

Crowley shook his head. Instead he did something very strange: with a single fingertip, he touched the back of the angel’s hand. They look at each other, and Anathema could feel the anxiety and exhaustion that passed between them like a lump of tears in her throat.

She took a mouthful of tea and scalded her tongue. She didn’t see the appeal. “Urgh. So, um. The damage to the aura is probably connected to the magic problems you mentioned. How does your magic usually work?”

“Miracles,” Aziraphale said immediately. “They’re miracles, when performed by angels.”

“Yes, yes, you’re ethereal, I’m occult, I know,” Crowley said. There was too much of an edge to his voice. Anathema knew he was putting it on, though for whose benefit she couldn’t work out. “It’s all the same. Let’s just call it magic.”

“Right. So it’s not ritual based?”

“Sometimes it is,” Aziraphale said. “Some rituals are _ex opere operato,_ for want of a better term. Some depend on the being’s own power. I haven’t noticed anything amiss in my apotropaic works – we tend to rely on ritualistic ‘magic’ against other preternatural beings.”

“Do you mean ‘supernatural’?” asked Newt.

“Now you’ve done it,” said Crowley.

“No, no, no – I indeed meant preternatural. _Supernatural_ means that one is beyond all the laws of created nature, so only God is supernatural. We – angelic and demonic beings – are preternatural in that we operate beyond the laws of nature of which humanity is currently aware.” The angel gave Newt a modest little smile.

“Right,” said Newt. “Um. Cool.”

“So your magic works within the realms of nature?” Anathema said.

“Yes and no,” said Aziraphale.

“We’re not bound by ‘reality’,” Crowley said, air-quoting, “as you understand it in the same way that you are. We’re spiritual beings, so our natural plane of existence is one where time and space and mass and shit don’t apply. They’re all limitations that we can manipulate. Each angel or demon can do it according to their created nature, their Name, imagination, concentration, innate power, willpower – they all have an effect.”

“Crowley can stop time,” Aziraphale said proudly.

Anathema stared at him. “Really.”

The demon shrugged. “Yeah. Not for long. But yeah. It’s just about concentrating hard on imagining a pocket within the space-time continuum.”

“Oh, right, perfectly simple, then,” Newt murmured.

“You need a certain degree of _understanding_,” said Aziraphale. “Take healing, for example. Crowley and I can both perform healings, but it’s easier for me. I can heal more with less concentration and effort. If it’s something complicated you need to know what the malady is, how it effects the body… We’d be here all day if we explained all the nuances of it.”

“And it’s mostly instinctive, I’d say,” Crowley said. “You did loads of healings before we really knew much about bodies.”

“I suppose so. What else? Conjuration.”

“You can create things?” Anathema asked. She had begun to scribble in a notebook.

“Oh, no,” Aziraphale said. He looked appalled. “Only God can create things.”

“What he means is that only God can create something out of nothing,” Crowley said. “Ignore him, he’s being pedantic.”

“The devil’s in the details.”

Crowley shot the angel a glare that somehow managed to look inordinately fond, then looked back at Anathema. “We can manipulate mass to make something according to our understanding of it, or change it into something else, or send it somewhere.”

“That seems like the easiest thing to illustrate it for us,” Anathema said. “Step one of the scientific method. Observe.”

“Okay. I’ll show you how it should be done,” Crowley said, and Aziraphale scoffed. The demon snapped his fingers, and on the table appeared a wine glass full of water. He flicked his finger, and it turned into red wine.

“But what did you create that _out of_?”

“Dunno. Some atoms somewhere.”

“Out of what did you create that?” Aziraphale murmured.

“Stop trying to pick a fight.”

Newt’s eyes were closed, and his head was in his hands. “You mean. That at this kitchen table, you were splitting molecules to create different molecules?”

“Yeah. I can do atoms too – not iron, iron’s tricky, ah. Ah, silver earrings?”

Anathema’s fingers went to her lobe. She pulled the dangling amethyst and peridot earring out, and it lay in her hand. Yellow gold.

“Did you just split an atom – split thousands, millions of atoms, right here, to change an earring?” Newt groaned.

“And look!” Crowley said. “We’re all still alive! And I just did it again to give your girlfriend a matching pair, and none of us are dead. The nuclear stuff’s a piece of piss.”

“Oh, right. Right. Of course. Of course it is.”

“I helped build a nebula, I know the bassicss,” Crowley hissed across the table.

Anathema noticed that Aziraphale had been very still and very quiet through all this. He was looking out of the window, as still as a sentinel. “Aziraphale?” she asked softly, and he came back to them with a jolt. “Do you mind doing what Crowley did? So we can see the problem?”

“Oh, right. Of course, my dear. Hm. Water, then water into wine, yes?” He snapped his fingers.

Next to Crowley’s glass of wine there appeared a large, jagged stone. It was covered in blood.

“Oh, God!” Aziraphale said, closing his eyes and turning his face away. Crowley swept the stone and the blood into nothingness with a wave of his hand. He then looked at Anathema and Newt and held up a finger.

She understood. She was to be very careful. “I can see the problem.”

“It’s not always the same thing,” Crowley said, with a voice like a metronome. “Try to ring a bell and a gramophone turns on. The last time he tried to turn water into wine it turned into Guinness instead.”

“… I like Guinness,” Newt offered.

Anathema nearly pulled him under the table to avoid whatever lightning was about to shoot out from behind Crowley’s glasses, but Aziraphale opened his eyes with a shuddering breath. “Too heavy for me. Horrible stuff.”

“When I went to uni our initiation ritual into the football team was to drink a pint of water, then a pint of milk, then a pint of Guinness in five minutes and then whoever threw up didn’t get on the team.”

Aziraphale, Crowley, and Anathema all stared at Newt. It was Crowley who broke the silence. “And when did you throw up?”

“First mouthful of Guinness,” Newt admitted. “Probably for the best. I can still drink it without spewing, not like Hazza. Harry.”

Aziraphale offered Anathema an expression of sympathy, as though he hadn’t just conjured Cain’s murder weapon onto her kitchen table. She looked down at her notebook to avoid it. “So you’re doing exactly the same thing you’ve always done, but the results are unexpected?”

“That’s right.”

“When did it start? Armageddon?”

The angel and the demon looked at each other. “Well…” said Crowley.

“Something after Armageddon,” said Aziraphale. “But we don’t want to compromise your hypothesis with any bias.”

Crowley rolled his eyes with his whole body. Anathema could _feel_ his anger, and she could feel the tightness of the grip the demon was keeping on it. She felt the flare of his frustration like heat on her face.

“Right,” Anathema said, injecting both scepticism and respect for scepticism into her voice. “So. It’s not that the magic doesn’t _work_, it just works wonkily…”

“Then it’s a semantic error,” said Newt.

All three turned to look at him. “What do you mean?” Aziraphale asked.

“Well… say your mind or your magic or whatever is a computer programme. You input your input and you have an expected output. If you put in the wrong input, it just won’t work. That’s a syntax error, you made a spelling mistake or something. But you said that you’re certain the input was the same as usual, right?”

Aziraphale nodded.

“So that means it’s a semantic error. If you’ve got a semantic error it might not work, or it might crash your computer. Or it might do something unexpected instead. Like your water turning into Guinness instead of wine.” Newt looked between them. “Your mind recognises the input as grammatically correct. It’s nothing to do with how the line of code’s constructed. The problem’s in the meaning behind it.”

Crowley was staring at him. He was so weirdly still. “The meaning behind the command, or the meaning underpinning the processor?”

“Either. Like… an unexpected variable’s been introduced. Or an old one’s gone, or is out of alignment, or means something different now.”

“Colorless green ideas sleep furiously,” said Anathema. “Chomsky. It’s grammatically correct, but semantically it’s nonsense.”

“Because something can’t be green and colourless at the same time?” Crowley said.

“Supposedly, but green is polysemous, so if it was green in the sense of ‘inexperienced’ something can be green and colourless at the same time. Or maybe ‘green’ refers to the environment, and ‘colorless’ is a metaphorical-“

Aziraphale suddenly stood up. “As fascinating as this is,” he said, bit his lip, and then tried again. “You’ve both been extremely helpful, thank you.”

“Sorry,” Anathema said. An old embarrassment curdled in her stomach; all her life, she’d alienated people by speaking like this. She’d thought it would be different when she went to college – suddenly she’d be among people of her own academic level, but even there she’d been out of her fellow students’ leagues, and years younger to boot. “I know I go off on tangents. By ‘polysemous’ Chomsky just means-“

“I speak more than a thousand languages!” Aziraphale suddenly shouted. “I know what _polysemy_ means! I taught Michel Bréal everything he knew about Zoroastrianism! Even if I hadn’t, even if _like some people_ I’d been asleep for hundreds of years at a time, I think I’d be able to work it out! I was at _the_ Symposium!”

“Angel,” Crowley said calmly. “They’re only trying to help us.”

“Oh, ‘trying’ being the significant word in that sentence! I _told you_ this’d be a waste of time!” Aziraphale was bright pink. He looked close to tears. “’A variable’s out of alignment’ – _everything’s _out of alignment! Every single thing’s been broken! I already knew all of this – I’m not an idiot! I’m not _stupid_!”

Crowley stood up so quickly he knocked his chair over. Even with his sunglasses on, he looked stricken. “No one’s saying you are.”

Aziraphale stepped back from his outreached hand and snapped his fingers.

He vanished.

In his place was a lion, pale gold with a white mane and blue eyes. He stared down at paws the size of dinner plates, and then back up at them. Up at Crowley.

He snarled. In the next instant, the kitchen was full of a great white bull. His horns gouged a line in the plaster of the wall, and cups went smashing to the floor.

“What are you trying to do?!” Crowley said, and the bull responded by scratching the stone floor.

His hoof left a line of gold in the stone. Muscles were bulging in his back, something was _writhing_ under the glowing hide, something was about to break free-

Crowley snapped his own fingers, and the bull was gone. Instead, Aziraphale appeared in the front garden, human again. Newt and Anathema watched in awkward silence as the buttoned-up angel roared in fury, kicked the bench, shouted again, and then flung himself down into Anathema’s garden deck-chair with his arms crossed.

They slowly looked back at Crowley.

“I’ll give him a second,” the demon said, sinking back into his seat. “He’ll feel embarrassed. He’s had a rough few days.”

“I mean, we all did,” Newt said. “There was that whole thing with… the airbase? I think – I remember we were at an airbase.”

The demon looked _incredibly_ unimpressed. “Yeah, but first, you got to forget most of that, and second, you didn’t have a disciplinary procedure to go through afterwards.”

This was rather more in Newt’s wheelhouse, from what Anathema had heard of his life. “Did you get fired?”

“Oh, no,” Crowley said. His grin was more like an animal bearing its fangs. With Aziraphale out of the room, his anger was writhing around the room. It was like a flame having a seizure. “_Aziraphale_ got fired. _I_ got holy watered.”

Newt looked confused. Crowley was looking increasingly manic. “You ever see _Fight Club_?”

“Yes…”

“You remember the scene where he pours lye on his hand? Imagine getting into a bathtub of that. That’s how you die.”

Newt looked like he was trying to retreat into his own spine. This told Anathema more than the reference had; she was proud of never having seen the movie. “And they tried to burn Aziraphale alive?”

Crowley spread his hands, to suggest he’d expected nothing less.

Anathema looked through the window again. Her heart softened for the angel. Being the descendent of Agnes Nutter meant that she’d given a lot of thought to what it was like to burn alive. However he’d survived, that was a lot of trauma to process.

“That’s super rough,” Newt offered. “The worst I ever got was Nationwide threatened to sue me. I usually just got the sack.”

“Had he known he’d survive? Either of you?” Anathema asked. That had always terrified her more. Not the fire itself, but the walk to it.

Crowley stared at her – or she assumed he did, behind those ridiculous sunglasses. “No. We hoped. I suppose there’s always hope when you’re dealing with ineffable supernatural bullshit. And it’s not like _bloody Nationwide_. For Hell’s sake. For me, being a demon? Job description. I’ve got a certain amount of professional pride, but it’s hardly a vocation. But for him, being an angel? It’s job, country, religion, family, species, all in one go. And they tried to _burn him_.” 

There was a flare of black fire on the edges of Anathema’s mind.

It was gone almost as soon as she noticed it. Crowley was poking her theodolite with one finger as though he wanted to enact some serious violence on it. “And when _that_ obviously didn’t work they were a tiny bit miffed and curious as to why. So a few days ago Gabriel came back down and roughed him up.”

“Gabriel?” Newt said. “Nativity play Gabriel?”

“That’s the one. He was the one wearing the grey suit last Saturday and being a prat,” Crowley said. He was speaking to them, but looking out of the window at Aziraphale.

Anathema looked at the angel, and then back. She thought of his aura. “When you say _roughed up_…?”

“Metaphysically speaking.”

“That’s what caused those rips in his aura?” Anathema said. “The purple ones?”

“Yeah. Bad sign that they’re still there. I can’t do anything with angelic essences. I’d probably just infect whatever I tried to heal.” The demon’s voice was close to cracking, and Anathema suddenly felt very young, far too young to deal with this. “And we can’t exactly go to Heaven and ask for any help, given the kind of other shit they’ve done to him.”

The demon’s anger until now had been a low simmer – tangible, but banked, carefully guarded, save for those brief flares. But as he said those words Anathema felt it like a visceral hand around her throat, a fistful of hair being ripped from her scalp, a claw raking through the fat and muscle and nerves of her breast and across her abdomen-

She came back to herself. Newt looked worried, and Crowley looked apologetic.

“Sorry,” he said. “I’m trying to keep it under control.”

She couldn’t stop shaking. “Never do that again. If you make me feel that again I’ll fucking exorcise you!”

“Fair. I’m sorry. It wasn’t deliberate. I’ll be more careful.”

Anathema realised she was cupping her left breast. She didn’t know whether it was for comfort or protection. “Take off your glasses.”

Crowley didn’t ask why. He hesitated for a moment, but he removed them, and looked her in the eye.

Those eyes never failed to send a chill up her spine, but they were open and sincere. “I’m sorry. It was an accident.”

She exhaled and nodded. “All right. All right. … shit, I need a drink.” Newt made to pour the tea and she waved him away. “Why do I only have gin?”

“Gin’s fine,” said Crowley, as though she’d been offering.

“Is that what I’d feel from him?” Anathema asked as she rooted a bottle out. Something called Gordon’s that she’d bought from the Duty Free at Heathrow. “If he let his guard down?”

“I wish,” Crowley said, and stared back blandly at her when she glared at him. “Genuinely. I wish. I don’t even know what you’d feel. I think it’d be worse. I _hope_ it’d be worse. But I don’t know if it would be, and that’s what worries me more. I just don’t know.”


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With credit and thanks to [ileolai](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ileolai/pseuds/ileolai), who wrote [this marvellous meta](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19396780) which touches upon the links between Aziraphale and Anathema and Crowley and Newt!

Aziraphale sat in the broken deckchair in the garden of Jasmine Cottage. He couldn’t even miracle it fixed, lest it turn into magma or become sentient. Or turn into sentient magma.

It felt even more unfair than everything else in his existence. Everything else already seemed to be going wrong, and now God had taken his ability to perform miracles too? Why? Had the rest not been sufficient for him to learn his lesson? Did She want him to be even more of a dead weight for Crowley to bear? To end whatever it was they had been so shyly fumbling towards for millennia before they had even had a chance to enjoy it…?

Well, yes. Perhaps that was it. Nothing She had thrown at Aziraphale until now had dissuaded him from that always-growing love for Crowley that had become increasingly difficult to ignore or repress. Not even the End of the World – no, all _that_ had done was intensify it, to bring it to a pitch where he would throw away absolutely everything else he had for it.

It seemed She’d switched tactics, then. To make Aziraphale so damaged and burdensome and melancholy that Crowley would have to turn aside instead. He stared up at the glorious Egyptian blue, late August sky in a wordless plea.

The door clicked behind him, and he closed his eyes to hide whatever was in them from the human he could sense.

He shoved his irritation down and painted over it with a sunny smile. He opened his eyes. “Ah, my dear girl! I owe you an apology.”

“No, _I_ was coming out to apologise,” Anathema said, and kicked the second deck chair into a form resembling submission. She handed him a glass of something fizzing and clear. “I’m sorry. I never meant to imply you didn’t know what it meant. I’m just so used to always having to explain things.”

“I know, my dear. That was all my fault.” Normally he wasn’t a gin and tonic fan, but it was like nectar in this moment. “Though if this is how you apologise every time I must take offence more often.” He made his smile as kind as he could. “No, my dear. You did nothing wrong at all. I’m just… afraid it’s a rather raw area at the moment.”

“Polysemy?” Anathema joked.

Aziraphale huffed: all he could manage of a performative laugh. “No. Intelligence.”

Anathema nodded. She looked across the overgrown garden. “I’ve always been too clever.”

“Humans are extraordinarily threatened by it, I’ve found. You have to hang a thousand veils on it, to soften it in their eyes. It’s like a knife to them.” The bitterness of the juniper and quinine matched his tone. “I know that I’m intelligent, for a given value of the word. I have a good memory. I’m all right at analytical things. It’s my judgement that’s fatally flawed.”

Anathema sipped her own drink. “Maybe you should leave the Judgement to God, then.”

“Oho, very clever,” Aziraphale said. Luckily, the girl had poured him a double. “I ‘think too much’, I’ve been told. Maybe Uriel was right – maybe that’s my problem. You can convince yourself of anything if you think too much. Stirring milk so long that it curdles… I should tell Crowley. He asked how someone so clever could be so stupid. Maybe it’s just an ouroboros.”

“If your being stupid includes you comparing your thought patterns to an ouroboros I think you’ll be all right.”

“Oh, no. That’s just knowledge, not sense.” Aziraphale looked back up at the unforgiving expanse of blue. It suddenly occurred to him that he was banished from it, forever. “My current… malady. I suspect it was caused by my lack of judgement. I trusted someone I ought not to have trusted, and I put myself and Crowley in unspeakable danger. I _was_ stupid. My judgement has always been lacking. Everyone says it. Everyone has always said it…”

“Not _everyone_,” said Anathema. “Not Crowley.”

“Oh, Crowley more than anyone! But he was always right about it. He wasn’t… It was never unkind, from him. Just exasperated. Nothing I didn’t deserve. Foolish – that’s what your Agnes called me, you know. _Foolishe Principalitee_.”

This distracted her from whatever was making righteous anger burn behind her eyes. “Principality? ... oh my God, it’s Prophecy 3008. I need a pen – there’s been a three-way bet on for decades as to whether it was about Monaco or Liechtenstein or Andorra.”

“Just me, I’m afraid.”

“I thought with the bull and the lion you might be a cherub. All we needed was the eagle.”

Aziraphale throttled the growling thing that surged up inside him, and shoved it back down his spine where it belonged. He took another mouthful of the gin and tonic to give himself time to compose himself. “Very good. You know your Ezekiel; it’s _so _nice to discover biblical literacy is not entirely lost among young people. Your guess is half correct. I used to be a cherub. I was demoted to Principality.”

“You mean they really are _ranks_?” Anathema said. She leant forward in her deck chair, which was a feat of core strength in itself. “I always read that the choirs were more like species – each created for a specific purpose.”

“I will never cease to be amazed by humans. You read something written by a man who is known, quite literally, as ‘Fake Denis’, and it’s Gospel truth. Not that the gospels are Gospel truth either, of course… No, the distinction you make between rank and species is not so hard and fast a rule as you might expect. They are both. More like… Nobility and peasantry, as humans have tended to conceive of them.”

“But I don’t just mean perception; the seraphim and cherubim have more wings than the others. Are they like badges? Part of the uniform?”

“No. They're limbs,” Aziraphale said, and finished his gin and tonic in a long final gulp. This was rather more truth than he wished any human to have about him, but he had learnt a great deal about Anathema in his reading of the prophecies, and he was too tired to much begrudge her the knowledge, as long as she didn’t offer any sympathy when it clicked into place.

He heard her gasp. There it was.

“I used to have a lion’s head, and a bull’s, and an eagle’s. I thought they had been torn out with the heads, but perhaps subconsciously I still think I have them. Still think of myself as a cherub. I thought I just hated being a Principality because of all the jokes people made, but… Angels shouldn’t even _have_ subconsciousses.” He held out the glass. “I couldn’t possibly trouble you for another, could I?” he asked, cutting off whatever she had been opening her mouth to say.

*

Anathema walked into the silent kitchen, poured another double gin and tonic in silence, and left silence in her wake as she went out again.

“So,” Crowley tried, because even talking to the magnificent specimen of humanity in front of him was better than being alone with his thoughts, “what’s your whole deal?”

“I _really_ don’t know,” Newt said with audible relief. “I’m from _Dorking._ I wanted to be a computer engineer. I love computers. But Anathema reckons there’s some kind of curse on me so that I could stop a nuclear apocalypse?” He shrugged helplessly. “All I know is that everything I touch seems to turn to shit.”

“Wow. Cheers to that.” Crowley raised his glass, and gave Newt a considering look. “… you wanna do shots?”

“Oh, god, yes.”

*

“Bless you,” Aziraphale said, as Anathema sat beside him and handed over the full glass. “And that’s official. Now, where were we? The prophecies, I think.”

He placed a little weight on the last sentence, and Anathema was both intelligent enough and kind enough to mark it. “Right. Yes. You know, I think that you’re the only person outside the family to have read the book since it was published?”

“Am I? I’m very flattered, even if it was entirely accidental… There was a great deal about your family in it. Many prophecies directed to them, if I’m not mistaken.”

“You’re not. It made the family something very… very fenced in. Clear boundaries. Only family could know about the book – know that a copy survived, I mean. Know that we had it.”

“A very wise precaution. I had a run in with some Nazi spies in London who were quite desperate to get their hands on a copy…”

“I'll ask you about that later... The prophecies helped the family. Made us millionaires. I grew up in a house in Malibu, looking out over the Pacific. I never wanted for anything…”

“Except freedom,” Aziraphale said, and smiled in the face of the sharp glare Anathema gave him. “It sounds like a gilded cage, my dear child. I understand. I grew up – or, sprang into being, I suppose – in _literal_ Heaven, and I very much have the scars. Visible and invisible.”

Anathema’s hand was shaking as she sipped her own cocktail. “It was a cult. God, I don't know why I'm telling you this. I just feel that I _should_. All we could ever talk about was the end of the world. It was…” Her voice cracked. “It was beautiful, and I was loved, and I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t terrified.”

Aziraphale exhaled, and sat up straight. He put the mostly full glass down on the grass. A gear had switched in him. _This_, his heart sang, _this_, he could do. He might not be a very good angel, he might in fact be a pathetic excuse for an angel, and now he might be a powerless and malfunctioning angel. But he was still an angel. He might not be able to perform miracles – he might not be able to heal, or protect Crowley, but he could listen and understand.

A stitch was made. Something clicked back into place.

He got up from the deckchair, and sat on the dry grass instead. He patted the ground beside him, and waited for the girl – because she was a girl, underneath her jutted chin and spiky words.

She got up and sat down. She held herself so tightly, after her confession; Aziraphale stared into her eyes, and took her hand, and let his love and sympathy and his deepening sense of solidarity rise to meet her, to be seen if she wished to see it. “In Heaven it was known as The Great Plan. Treasonous to speak out against it.”

Anathema nodded. “Oh, God, if you ever suggested that the prophecies weren’t true, that was an hour-long lecture about the history of the family!”

“Your role set out for you. From birth.”

The nodding became more desperate, more grateful. “From _before_ birth. I was going to be a witch. And I was going to try to stop the end of the world. And I was going to fail.”

“Oh, my poor child,” Aziraphale said, warm and gentle. “My poor dear girl. I was told the same. I remember it well. ‘We will be most understanding when you fail.’”

Anathema finally squeezed his hand in return, and he could sense her surprise and her appreciation. She _giggled_, low and dark and heart-breaking. “Of course! I never had to worry about my parents being disappointed, I suppose. We’d all be dead.” Her chin wobbled. “I thought I was never going to see her again. I thought I was never going to see my mother again.”

“_Oh_,” Aziraphale said. He could feel his own grief of knowing that he would never see his Mother again, and he could feel hers – it bounced between them through their joined hands, echoing and reverberating. Anathema now would be able to see her mother again, and yet her grief was raw and afraid. For once Aziraphale tried not to think, and trusted his intuition instead. “But there’s something now – a separation between you? Something which can't be undone. You’re afraid… that she won’t welcome you home?”

Anathema’s shoulders heaved, and suddenly she was sobbing like a child. She reached out, blind and groping, quite automatic; the instinct of a loved child. Aziraphale responded to it with an instinct which he thought of as angelic, and took her into his embrace. “Come now, come now. It’s all right.”

“I burned it!” she wept into his shoulder. He was surprised by the strength of her grip.

“What did you burn, my dear?” he asked softly. He remembered another burning thing, the comforting heat of it as She handed it to him…

“Agnes wrote another book! She wrote another book of prophecies, it was delivered here on Sunday, the day after- after- and _I burned it_.”

Aziraphale almost pulled back. He almost shoved the crying girl out of his arms. He caught his fury and his disgust before it reached his skin, and packed them down, packed them tightly down.

There was nothing he hated more than a book-burner.

But, he thought, the way he felt about book-burners was probably how Heaven thought of him now. He had done the unthinkable in front of his platoon; news of that, if nothing else, would have spread throughout the Host. They did not know his reasons, and if they did, they would not understand them. They, too, would think of him with fury and disgust.

And, apart from anything else, this was not a normal book. He took a calming breath. “_Why_, Anathema?”

“Because otherwise I’d never be free! There’d just be new expectations, new things that I _had _to do. The cage had been destroyed and here it was again!” Anathema pulled back from him, and looked into his eyes. “I burned it a week ago, and every day I know I have to tell them, and every day it becomes harder to!”

He remembered staring up into the brightest, purest light in existence. _Sword? Ah, yes… sharp, cutting thing…_ “Must you tell them?”

Anathema nodded. “Yes. Yes. I can’t not. I can’t live with a lie like that. But I made the decision for all of them, and they’ll hate me.”

“They might,” Aziraphale acceded. “But I don’t think they will. I can feel your mother’s love in your hair. She strokes it...”

Anathema’s breath shuddered. She nodded.

“Hmm. Let’s think it through,” Aziraphale said calmly. “Agnes sent it to you. Not to your mother in California – I think that's where Malibu is, yes? How she might have managed that would be fascinating to contemplate. But if Agnes knew where you would be living on the day after the Apocalypse… Is it not possible that she also knew that you would destroy her book? It was to _you_ she gave the decision.”

She looked horrified. “You think Agnes knew?”

“I wouldn’t put it past her.”

“Then why send it in the first place? Why write it and go to all the effort and expense if she knew I was going to burn it?”

“To give you a free choice.”

Anathema’s dark eyes flashed. “But it’s not a free choice if she knew the outcome!”

“I believe it is. That’s a problem we’ve all grappled with. How can there be free will, if God is omniscient? I’ve always thought that… God knows every direction which is possible, from any thought or action. She holds every possibility in Her mind. But Her omniscience in knowing which direction we will take is not because She knows the future. She knows all possible futures. But She also knows us _as people_. As free-thinking individuals, in the way that you know someone whom you love very deeply.”

He tried to find an example, and of course, there was only one option for him. His mouth chose it for him before his mind could even contemplate it. “For example, I know that Crowley prefers red wine to white. Or I imagine Crowley with two cars in front of him, his Bentley and one of those small hybrid cars – the bubble-looking ones, you know? He has a free choice between them, but I know him well enough to know which one he will pick to drive. It’s not predestination so much as the knowledge that comes from love. That came across, when I read her prophecies. Her love for you.”

Anathema looked at him so hopefully, but suddenly he could barely speak. There was a knot of tears in his own throat, quite without warning. He swallowed it painfully, and focused on Anathema. “The chance to reject her was the gift she could give to you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fake Denis = Pseudo-Dionysus


	14. Chapter 14

Like most functioning alcoholics, Crowley thought that he operated best with a few units in him. But the distraction of keeping an eye on Aziraphale through the kitchen window – how dare the witch hug him for so long? – and the nagging anxiety of the thermos flask full of hellfire on the kitchen table meant that his heart wasn’t in it.

He still _did_ the shots, of course, he just sobered himself up again afterwards. Double masochiatto.

The real fun was the fact that Newt was gamely trying to match him. Crowley wondered whether he could give him alcohol poisoning before Aziraphale and Anathema came back in.

“’Nathema thinks I should go ‘n’. ‘N’. Sabotage. Sabotage oil thingies.”

“Yeah,” Crowley said, wrenching himself back. “That’d be good. Go do that.”

“But I don’t know _how_ I break them! What if I do a. You know. You remember BP? And all the birds?”

“Or the _Exxon Valdez_,” Crowley offered.

“_Exactly_. Exactly. I mean, what if the computer’s making it _safe_?”

“Tsk.” Crowley topped up the shot glasses from the never-empty bottle of gin. “You said ‘computer’, that’s a shot.”

“Oh, right, ‘kay,” Newt said, and obediently downed it. “Blegh. But anyway, all I want is to work with. You know.” He gave Crowley a horrifying approximation of a wink. “But then all I do is _break_ them. ‘S a curse.”

“God’s just a bitch sometimes,” Crowley said. Old habits die hard. “Go oooon, say it. I dare you. Say God’s a bitch or you have to do a shot.”

“Don’t believe in God though.”

“You’re doing shots with a demon, computer boy.”

“Ah! Ah, ah, ah! You said it! Shot!”

“Fine,” Crowley said, and downed his. “Fuck me, that’s disgusting. You still haven’t said it though, so you’ve got to do one too.”

“Don’t believe in. No _proof_.”

Crowley groaned and rubbed his eyes. “Forget it. Just. You know what you got to do? When God says _Fuck you_, you have to say FUCK YOU back. Not, not out loud, ‘n case She smites you. But with your _life_. If you just break computers, you go and be a brilliant computer-breaker.”

“Ah, ah-“

“No, fuck off, rule doesn’t count now. Trying to give you hard-won life advice here.”

“But I _love_ computers. I don’t want to _break_ them.”

“Mosaic artists love pretty stones, don’t they? Bad example – dunno where all the mosaic people went…”

“What’s going on in here?” Anathema asked. “Newt?

“’Nathema!” Newt said, beaming widely. “So beautiful Anathema…”

“Well, I’m glad you’ve been enjoying yourself,” Aziraphale said stiffly. He raised his hand to snap his fingers, and stopped himself just in time.

The horror on Anathema’s face and the pain on Aziraphale’s extinguished any warmth the casual malice had kindled in Crowley. He snapped his own fingers up, and Newt collapsed forward onto the table with a groan. “Relax, you’ll feel fine in a second.”

“What did you _do_ to me?”

“Sobered you up. You’re welcome.”

“We ought to be heading back,” Aziraphale said, and the bastard gave Anathema another hug. Probably as revenge. “Now, you have my telephone number. You call any time of the day or night. Whenever you need to. And _do_ please call me after you speak to your mother. I’ll sure it’ll be just fine, but I’ll be worried.”

“Don’t be,” said Anathema. “I think it’ll be rough, but afterwards it’ll be all right. …it’s such a strange feeling. I never thought I’d find someone who understood it. When your whole life had a plan, and suddenly it doesn’t. What do you do after the duty’s gone?”

“Live, I suppose,” Aziraphale said, in a voice that made Crowley’s heart flip over.

“I don’t know how to do that.” Anathema’s voice was smaller than Crowley had heard, and she suddenly seemed her age.

“Neither do I,” Aziraphale admitted. “Neither do I. But there are a few of us trying to find out.” And the angel gave Crowley such a shyly happy look that he almost turned into a snake, just to prevent Anathema and Newt from witnessing the mirror of it on his treacherous human face. “And _I_ think it might be helpful for all of us if we can compare notes on it. So I do hope you’ll come to London soon? I can show you all of Agnes’ old reviews, I’ve got them in my catalogue.”

Aziraphale was obviously in Full VIP Platinum Angelic Experience Mode, so getting out of the damn door took another quarter of an hour, but eventually they were in the Bentley, hellfire thermos in the back footwell, and Crowley was speeding away as quickly as the winding country roads would allow.

“That was a good idea, Crowley,” Aziraphale said suddenly. “Thank you, for making me come.”

“As the actress said to the bishop,” replied Crowley, quite automatically. “Sorry. I’m glad it helped.”

“It did. Even that poor computer programmer’s analogy. I think it made it a little clearer. I’m sorry for storming out like that.”

“It’s all right. I think a bit of anger’s perfectly justified in the current situation. You need more pressure valves, not fewer. Healthy release of emotion.”

“I’ve noticed that the healthy release of emotion can be unhealthy for whomever is around you at the time,” Aziraphale said anxiously.

“Then we’ll go somewhere else. The Sahara. The Moon. I told you. Wherever you want to go, I’ll take you.”

“But then you’ll be around me, my dear.”

“I don’t count.”

“You count more than anyone.”

This made Crowley nearly crash the car.

Then he ran the Bentley off the road onto the grass at the side, because in the middle of the road’s single lane was a red Peugeot, and it was on fire.

For a second, it was the Bentley on fire again. He could hear the roar of the flames and the _pingpingping_ of red-hot metal. He could feel the heat in his lungs like he was drowning in boiling water. All he could smell was burning hair and burning leather and burning plastic and burning metal, and pain hammered at his forehead as he sweated to keep the car together.

Then he felt cool air, and there had been no cool air driving to that airbase, and Crowley was yanked back to the present. Aziraphale was already up and out of the door, running forwards to see who was in the car, and Crowley had _joked_ about it – joked about Aziraphale trying to magic a baby out of a burning house and just sending someone else in to join it.

But Aziraphale was a guardian, after all, and stupid protective instinct made him rush forward to save someone without a millisecond’s thought for himself, and so Crowley had to think for both of them and follow to save _Aziraphale_.

If he ever ran into Alexander Pope again, he was going to choke him.

He reached out his hand as he ran to catch up with Aziraphale – he could suck the flames away before the engine blew, though healing whomever was inside was going to be the tricky bit, given Aziraphale’s _semantic errors_.

As soon as he called the flames to him, the fire disappeared.

So did the Peugeot.

Crowley was frozen, mid run, on the tiptoes of his right foot. It didn’t hurt, because it took no effort for him to remain standing. He couldn’t move anything below his neck, which was lucky, because it allowed him to spit out a string of obscenities.

Where the burning car had been stood two angels. And a metre in front of Crowley stood Aziraphale, apparently as frozen as he was.

The hellfire sat in its thermos flask, in the back footwell of the Bentley, several yards behind them.

One angel was Michael. Crowley hadn’t seen them in millennia, but remembered that he was meant to have seen them at his trial a week ago. Not that it mattered. Michael looked angry, and once you’d seen Michael angry the sight never left you. Their cheeks and lips and eyes glowed gold with it.

The other angel he didn’t recognise, probably because they had gone to very great lengths to make sure that no one did.

Their clothing was like the habit of a Dominican, but all of it was black. Tunic and scapular, cappa and capuce, which was up to cast their face in shadow – all were black. It took Crowley a second to place it until he remembered his commendation for the Spanish Inquisition. They wore long black gloves over their sleeves, so that no skin showed, and even under the hood the lower part of their face was swathed in black linen. The only things about them that were not cloth or darkness were twin candle flames over their eyes.

Aziraphale’s body sagged; his knees bent, and yet he stayed upright. “Um,” Aziraphale said, in that echoing, wavering voice he had used when he had been discorporated. “This is very awkward. My body’s fainted.”

The black-robed angel laughed – a deep, masculine laugh – and waved a hand. Aziraphale’s body straightened, and there he was again, forcibly recorporated. Crowley could see the sweat on the back of his neck, and the way his body was perfectly still, but his white curls trembled despite there being no wind.

The black-robed angel nodded his head in acknowledgement. “It has been a long time, Aziraphale. And I do not believe I ever met Crowley, though of course, I have seen him.”

Crowley tried to smile nonchalantly. It ended up being a terrified sneer. “I suspect from the over-the-top Halloween costume that you’re Raziel?”

“Yes.” Those twin flames flickered over Crowley, and Crowley felt pinned, like a butterfly to a cork board. “You will not need your hellfire. I will not touch either of you unless you ask it of me.”

Crowley managed to scoff at that, but the whimper of fear he heard from Aziraphale was like icy claws digging into his lungs.

Michael looked afraid. “There’s hellfire? Here?”

“Oh, yes. Hidden away, in a secret place. Holy water too,” Raziel said. “But you need not fear, Michael. I will hold them, while you speak your piece. We come under a flag of truce.”

“Truce?!” Crowley snarled. “That’s rich. You don’t do this under a truce!”

Michael daintily pulled a large white flag from their breast pocket. Aziraphale would have called it cheating.

“It is to avoid any impulsive actions. That is all.”

“Some unseemly behaviour by one of our archangels has come to our attention," said Michael.

“Unseemly.” Aziraphale’s voice was high-pitched and wavering. “Unseemly. That’s what you’d call it?”

“Yes. Unseemly, improper. Whatever. We know what Gabriel did.”

“And you think it’s _unseemly_. Just not the done thing, old chap! What a faux pas!”

“Aziraphale!” Crowley hissed. He took back everything he’d said about emotional pressure valves.

“Did Gabriel tell you about his little lapse? Or did he come up boasting?” Aziraphale said, and Crowley was selfishly glad he couldn’t see the angel’s face.

“He wanted a new body,” Michael said. Their jaw was so tight they could barely get the words out. “He refused to say what'd happened to the other one. He wasn't... himself. When we learnt what he'd done that confirmed it. I made the decision that the failure of the Apocalypse has obviously had an effect on his mood, and so I’ve sent him for compulsory medical evaluation and treatment.”

Crowley had thought he could not be more angry. As ever, he was wrong. “Raphael does _sex rehab now_?” he asked incredulously. “Are you _kidding_? Too big to fail, right?”

The reference visibly bypassed Michael, but they glared at Crowley all the same. “If you want to put it like that, but it was nothing to do with sex. It was an interrogation which went too far, and was done without permission. It was against Heavenly policy, there was a disciplinary procedure, and Gabriel has been relieved of his duties until Raphael deems him well again.”

“No longer likely to act in such an unseemly way, you mean?” Aziraphale said. He sounded as brittle as glass. “And yet Raziel’s here with you?”

Michael stared at Aziraphale. “A non sequitur, Aziraphale.”

“Gabriel did exactly what Raziel has done! Because Gabriel did it without permission, suddenly it’s unseemly. But it was all right for Raziel to do what he did, to six of us, while all the hosts of Heaven watched!”

“Four of you,” said Raziel. “Two of them were guilty.”

“No, six of us! It doesn’t matter!” Aziraphale said furiously. “Six of us! Guilty or not, it was _wrong_! It was just as wrong to do that to Kinnoriel or Lagariel as it was to Reuel or Yerachmiel or... Or…”

Crowley willed him to say the final word, but Aziraphale didn’t. Couldn’t.

“You want to talk about Lagariel?” Michael said. “After your boyfriend murdered him?”

“I would again,” Crowley said. “I didn’t go to him. He came to _me_, and it wasn’t to invite me for tea and cakes, was it? Besides. As far as I know, Ligur is alive again. Thanks to Adam. What _you_ did to him hasn’t been undone.”

“I’m not talking about killing,” said Aziraphale. “I’m talking about what Raziel did. What you and the others ordered him to do. What Gabriel did.”

“How do you think we know of this?” Raziel asked. “I questioned him, just like I questioned you, and the others you name. Was that wrong? Would you rather I had not questioned him?”

“Yes! I would rather that! It was still wrong!” Aziraphale’s voice cut away. He sounded shocked by his own words. “Doing that to Gabriel was also wrong…”

Beneath the capuce, Raziel’s head was cocked to the side. “How interesting.”

“That’s not why we’re here,” Michael said. “After a week of negotiation with Hell, we've reclassified the two of you as a neutral state.” In their hand appeared a piece of parchment, with wax seals dangling from it. “I'll make an amendment that if you're really in possession of hellfire and holy water, you're an _armed_ neutral state… Raziel, if you could witness the amendment?”

A mark on the parchment glowed with silvery light. Crowley could see four other sigils. Two shades of gold, pale and deep, shone on the right; on the left, he recognised the bloodfire and rotblack of Beelzebul’s sigil and the glittering fish-scale flash and squirm of Dagon’s beneath it.

They were the real deals.

“This details your new situation, as you're apparently no longer angel, demon, _or_ human. Neither Heaven nor Hell will act in aggression against you. Both have agreed that any individual angel or demon acting against you will be considered a rogue agent; if they survive their encounter with you they will be subject to internal disciplinary procedures. Retaliation on your parts against the general bodies of Heaven and Hell will be considered an act of war and will be answered accordingly. You will be expected to obey the statutes set out by both states with regards to official negotiations and communications.”

It had worked. It had actually _worked_. The Archangels of the Lord and the Dark Council were scared of them, and were so desperate to avoid having to deal with them they were putting sigils to it.

Michael placed the parchment on the ground between them, and took some steps back. “No doubt we'll have to add further amendments in the future. Raziel and I were unable to enter your _bookshop_, so we'll work out a neutral place in the future if we need to discuss this further. I pray to God that we don’t.”

“How did you find us, then?” Crowley asked. He was straining to read the text of the parchment.

“I know what your car looks like,” said Raziel, and this made Crowley look up. “Speaking of which… Michael, there are secret things which I must discuss with Aziraphale and Crowley. You may go.”

Aziraphale made an involuntary noise again, and Crowley struggled so hard against whatever was holding them in place he got cramp in his calf. He forgot the white flag and the neutrality recognition on the road between them; all he could think of was getting that flask and burning Raziel out of existence.

Michael’s nostrils flared in anger. “Things which I, the one who is like God, am not privy to?”

Aziraphale made a sound of outrage. Better than the terror at least, Crowley thought wildly.

“She Is Who She Is,” Raziel answered. "‘_Like_’ is not ‘_Is_’. These things are not for your hearing. Go.”

Michael looked at Crowley and Aziraphale with a final, poisonous expression. Then, with a flash of white light that made the leafy trees around them blaze like emerald and jasper, they were gone.

The wind died away. Behind them, the engine of the Bently rumbled on contentedly.

“Now,” Raziel said with a smile in his voice, “we can converse properly. I bring a peace-offering.”

“No peace-offering will work,” Crowley said. “The second you let us go you’ll die burning.”

Raziel chuckled. “That is hardly an incentive for me to let you go, is it? This gift does not require you to move, though. When I was questioning Gabriel I saw everything that happened. I also saw what he, in his violence and his brutalising, did not see. The shape he overlooked.”

_Fuck. Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck._

“No,” Aziraphale whispered.

Raziel held up his right hand, and his ring finger was pressed to his thumb. “Do not be afraid,” he said, with an audible smile. “Your secret is safe with me.”

“Sserioussly?” Crowley hissed. His right leg was hurting in earnest now. “You expect us to believe that?”

“The truth is the truth, whether you believe it or not. I am the Lord of Secrets. I am not only the master of finding them out, I am the master of keeping them.”

Crowley was struck dumb. Before his Fall he had never been high enough to have any interaction with Raziel. He wished that he could see Aziraphale’s face, and judge from it whether this was true or not.

“You saw it?” Aziraphale asked softly. He was choking on the words.

Raziel shook his head. “Only the shape of it. I could see only what he remembered seeing. I surmised it was the secret of how you both survived from how desperate you were to protect it. You sacrificed every other thing you had to keep a secret. That, I can respect. That is what gives me joy. The brightness of the sacrifice makes the depth of the mystery so much darker.”

Crowley had a sick feeling of bathophobia. He wanted to step back from it, from the abyss just behind those twin candle flames.

Raziel took a step towards Aziraphale, and raised his gloved hand. Then he dropped it. “I have excised every thought of yours from his head. No memory he stole from you is left to him. I only left the emotions which he made you feel. Perhaps they will be teachers to him.”

Aziraphale was speaking in that terrible _trying-to-be-brave_ voice which always undid Crowley. “Does that mean that you know them now?”

“No. I removed the memories from him. I cannot destroy them, because I will recognise the shapes absent from my own memory. I have censored them instead. They are shrouded in darkness. I carry them, but I do not know them.”

Crowley felt as though his brain wasn’t breaking so much as _bending_. “A professional courtesy?”

Raziel hummed in laughter. “Absolutely not. I am the professional. Aziraphale is an amateur, for he kept his secret out of love. No, it was a gift, from one secret-keeper to another.”

Aziraphale must have been looking distressed, because Raziel then said, “Are you not grateful?”

“How can I be? When I know what you did to him to bring them out?”

“I suppose it does not matter whether you are grateful or not. The gift is one of respect. As for what I did, it was my right to question Gabriel.”

“To rape him, you mean?” Crowley said.

“If you wish to call it that,” Raziel said. There was no anger or shame in his voice, only mild thoughtfulness. “I certainly plundered, I suppose. As he did.” _There_, suddenly, was the anger in his voice. “He took what is yours, Aziraphale, but he also took upon himself that which was granted to me. When Heaven refused justice on your behalf, I demanded it on _mine_.”

“Mingling as interrogation? That’s _yours_, is it?” Crowley had always known Heaven was fucked-up, but he kept thinking he’d learnt the limits of just _how_ fucked-up it was was, and every time he was proved incorrect.

“Indeed. I was granted all powers to seek out secrets.”

“Powers,” Crowley said. “Not rights. You had no right to do that to Aziraphale, or to Gabriel, or to the Watchers, for that matter!”

“Might isn’t Right,” Aziraphale said, almost singing in his fear.

“I confess I do not see the difference.” Raziel shrugged.

“That makes no sense! Because Gabriel _could_ do it, but you’re saying he had no right to!”

“He did not. He did not mingle with you to uncover a secret. He sought your humiliation and destruction. The finding out of your secret was an excuse for him. That is an insult to me.”

_He’s a fucking monomaniac_, Crowley thought. It was like trying to argue with water. Crowley prided himself on his imagination and his lateral thinking, but trying to think like Raziel was like trying to think like the embodied abstract concept of… well, _secrecy. _

“Aziraphale, on the other hand… You sacrificed everything you had to protect a secret. As I said, that is something that I can respect.”

“You respect me because I kept a secret?” Aziraphale said. Crowley saw something drip onto the shiny leather of his shoe. “What about before? I had secrets then as well.”

“You only had one true secret then, and God had already told it to me. It had pleased Her, and amused Her. She wished to share Her pride with us. Your other secrets were all piffling, insignificant little scraps of fear or shame. Nothing to interest me.”

“But you… Can’t you _see_ that what you did to us, that was _the same crime_ Shemazai and the others committed against humans?”

“The crime of Shemazai and his fellows was the dissemination of technological mysteries to humanity before their time. Mine are the mysteries. Mine was the right to question them.”

“But _I also gave away technology! _I gave Adam and Eve fire, and the sword!”

“Out of love. And so, to God, it was the correct time. The Grigori gave it so that they might be worshipped as gods.” Raziel gave what could almost have been a sigh. “It is difficult for you to comprehend. You have not been trained in the mysteries… But that is why I am here. What I have seen of both of you has interested me. Both of you move in mystery. You are veiled from the rest of us all, and yet you have also helped humanity to uncover secrets. You may take your parchment, if you wish. Or you may come with me. I have gained permission to offer you both a position as my acolyte.”

“Fuck you,” Crowley said, instantly.

Raziel raised his hand. “I would not separate you. It would have to be both of you, I think. Neither of you could be alone in it. But Aziraphale to hide, and Crowley to seek…” He made a noise of pleasure. “Like the game human children play. An excellent game.”

“No,” Crowley said. “Never.” He wanted to add a _Go fuck yourself_ for emphasis, but he realised with a sudden drop of dread that Aziraphale hadn’t answered. And he could not see his face. The offer of knowledge and Heaven – Heaven without working under Gabriel and the other Archangels.

Working under Raziel instead.

Aziraphale shook his head, and Crowley could hear his tears. “No. I understand the rarity of the offer, but… I know you can’t see it, but what you do is wrong. I hope that one day that mystery is unveiled for you. But I want- I _am_ staying here. With Crowley. The only place I belong now is with him.”

Raziel spread his hands. “Very well. It is what I thought you would choose, but it behoved me to ask. I will think on what you have said, until the next time we meet.”

Like a shadow vanishing when the sun moves behind a cloud, Raziel melted away. As soon as his power was gone from the Earth Crowley fell forward, no longer supporting by the freezing miracle, and grazed his hands open as he caught himself.

But Aziraphale was there, Aziraphale was right there; he healed Crowley’s hands, his own power sputtering with his sobs. Aziraphale, who had chosen him. Aziraphale, who had rejected an offer to return to Heaven not out of fear of Raziel or any of them, but out of love for him. Who had said it out loud.

Aziraphale clung to him, shaking. Crowley’s hand was pressed to the back of his neck; through his skin he could fear all his terror and his love, and Crowley felt as though he really had been doused in holy water, such was the adrenaline coursing through him – through both of them. He kissed Aziraphale’s hair, and with his free hand gripped the parchment so hard that it crumpled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “I’ve noticed that the healthy release of emotion can be unhealthy for whomever is around you at the time,” is misquoted shamelessly from 'Plato's Stepchildren,' which I doubt Aziraphale has seen. Which environment is worse for developing healthy emotional integration, Heaven or Vulcan?
> 
> Alexander Pope wrote the line "Fools rush in where angels fear to tread," which Crowley has already vented about.


	15. Chapter 15

Every winter Crowley cursed Aziraphale for forcing them both to settle on a wet, cold, damp, miserable excuse for an island, with shit food and an unhealthy level of emotional repression. However, this unhealthy level of emotional repression had also resulted in (in Crowley’s professional evaluation) an absolutely first-class drinking culture, and so today he blessed Aziraphale’s choice of a country in which the nearest pub was rarely far away.

Aziraphale had no mental capacity at all, frankly, and Crowley was running on fumes, so it was the Bentley that saved the day and ferried them to the closest one – a nauseatingly lovely stone building with roses and a hand-painted swan swinging gently above the door.

It was a Saturday afternoon in the summer holidays, and full to the gills. Crowley marked the regulars, and everyone else suddenly decided to sit outside given that it was such a hot day, or get a move on to Blenheim Palace before it shut, or simply that the food was merely mediocre and they’d not linger. This for everyone except for the couple with clear plates who’d taken over a booth in the far corner; they were suddenly convinced they’d left the car open, and so Crowley was able to ensconce the angel in a comfortingly enclosed space within ninety seconds of entering.

He fancied whiskey, and suspected Aziraphale would too, but even if money was no object to him he couldn’t be arsed with the argument about the price of a bottle, if they even sold him one. So he ordered two bottles of red and a food menu. _Normality_, his brain screamed at him. They _both_ needed normality after that shit-show. Food was normal. Good English pub lunch. You couldn’t get anything more aggressively traditional than a pub lunch.

Not that Aziraphale would order anything, so soon after an angelic encounter of that magnitude.

It was a shame it wasn’t a Sunday, so he could order a roast. And the pub was trying to be too fancy, and it irritated him. He ordered two steaks with chips, and he’d nibble at whichever one didn’t tempt Aziraphale as much. He hoped Aziraphale could be tempted. The last thing Crowley remembered seeing Aziraphale eat was the two bourbon biscuits at the medium’s flat, and that was less out-of-character so much as cause for immediate sectioning.

He sat down in the booth and poured them both a glass of merlot. “So. Do you think it’s real?”

“As far as I can tell,” Aziraphale said. His voice was very slow. Each word came out as though it was being dragged through tar. “You’re better with contracts than me… We’ll need to work out all the loopholes. What it doesn’t say.”

“We will. After some lunch.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Well, I am. So hungry I ordered two meals, so you can just sit and wait for me. Drink your wine.” Aziraphale picked up the glass. It was a start. “What about the sigils? Are they real?”

“Yes.” Aziraphale’s fingertips drifted across the gold sigils. “You can feel them. Sunlight for Uriel, cold metal for Michael…” Crowley didn’t ask, but Aziraphale smiled oddly at him anyway. “Gabriel’s feels like a hot coal. When you’re heating it, before you pour the incense on.”

They both looked down at Raziel’s silver mark. Aziraphale made no move to touch it, and Crowley didn’t blame him in the least. “What does yours feel like?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think you can feel your own. Like humans and body odour.”

“Lovely.” Crowley took a mouthful of wine, and the pain in his head subsided just a little (it was a placebo, obviously, but even humans’ perceptions of reality can, to a small degree, influence their reality. For angels and demons, placebos were more effective than most human medicines). “So. We need to think of a name for our neutral state.”

Aziraphale gave him a smile, the first since they had seen that flaming Peugeot. “I thought it was ‘Our Own Side’?”

“Sure, that’ll do for the full name, but I think we need something pithier for day to day. Crowland. Crowlania. Crowleria. Lots of options. There’s a lot to think about. We need a flag. Motto. Colour. Coat of arms.”

“Oh, I want to do the coat of arms,” Aziraphale said. “Head of state?”

“I suppose you’re the Principality. You can be head of state, and I’ll be the prime minister.”

“But that means my role is symbolic, and you have all the political power.”

“Unless we go to war. Or have to entertain visiting dignitaries.”

“Oh, I see, so I have to entertain? I don’t think so.”

“Sorry. I baggsied Prime Minister, so you’re just going to have to be Prince and lump it.”

Aziraphale was softening, and his smile was becoming something more genuine. “That means that I get to pick the national anthem.”

“Wait, shit.”

“Oh, I’ll have to think about this one. National animal is the snake, obviously.”

Crowley raised his glass. “Well, thank you.”

Aziraphale finally took a bloody sip of wine. “The bookshop’s the capital. Your flat can be the second city.”

“Thank you, Your Highness. Currency?”

“Wine. We’ll have to work out a full exchange rate, though. A lot’ll depend on Brexit.”

“Now that Brexit’s supposedly happening. Bet you the next big one happens before Brexit.”

“I’ll take that bet. Oh! That means we’ve just established our stock exchange.”

Crowley laughed, and the surprise of being able to laugh made him laugh louder. It made something unknot in him, that they could still joke. That Crowley could still laugh. Fuck, if they could laugh, they might be all right. If, occasionally, they could laugh, maybe things could be all right.

*

As he had said, Crowley had ordered two meals, and started on a rare steak and chips while they argued about mottoes. Eventually the garlic butter melting across the seared meat made Aziraphale pull the second plate over, and Crowley didn’t need to take his sunglasses off for Aziraphale to appreciate his look of victory.

At the end of the first bottle Crowley muffled the sound in their booth. Aziraphale genuinely wasn’t hungry, and was picking at his meal more than eating it, but Crowley was undeterred. They reached a stalemate with regards to mottoes, and had moved onto national anthems. “_I see trees of green, red roses too,”_ Aziraphale sang in his melodious tenor.

“Nope,” Crowley said. “Veto. Way too soppy.”

“I think it’s perfect.”

“Yeah, you would. Because you’re soppy. I’ve got one far better: _Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right; here I am –_“

Crowley held out his hand for Aziraphale to finish, and Aziraphale shook his head. “I don’t know that one.”

“Urgh, pathetic. Fine, fine, something older, just for you: _I waltzed into the angel’s bookshop; way-hey, bully in the alley!”_

“Absolutely not! That would give entirely the wrong impression of my shop!”

“Perfectly accurate and you know it, angel, don’t try to deny it.”

“I’m vetoing it anyway.”

“_Watkin’s Ale_.”

“You are disgusting. Absolutely incorrigible. You are a child – this is our national anthem, you should take it more seriously.”

“You’re right, you’re right. I know, I’ve got it.”

“Will I know this one?”

“Yes, I promise.” Crowley finished his glass, and cleared his throat. “Ahem.”

Aziraphale provided a small drumroll on the table, and Crowley’s eyes glittered gold over his sunglasses. He placed his hand over his heart.

“_We saved our stupid world_-“ Aziraphale burst out laughing, and Crowley gained an inch in height as he continued, “_we saved our rubbish world, we saved the world!_”

“Bombom bombom bom bom-“

“_Send us victorious!_” Crowley belted out, reaching his hand up in faux-patriotic fervour.

Aziraphale joined in, as well as he could in between his laughter. “_Happy and glorious!_”

“_Us to reign over us! We! Saved! The! World!_”

Aziraphale was laughing so much there were tears in his eyes. “You wicked old-“

“I genuinely can’t tell whether you’re more offended on behalf of the world or the Queen,” Crowley said, laughing himself.

“Just by your singing,” Aziraphale said. His shoulders were heaving with laughter, and his cheeks were wet.

He wiped his eyes, but it became more and more difficult to breathe. His shoulders rose higher, and the tears came faster even as his laughter died away. “Oh-?”

“Aziraphale?” he heard Crowley asked softly.

His chest was growing tighter. “Sorry.” He blinked, and new tears fell; as soon as they did, his eyes were full again. “I’m so sorry, I don’t know how that- I don’t know what’s-“ He groped for the paper napkin and pressed it to his eyes. “I’m so sorry. So embarrassing.”

“Don’t worry. Shit comes at you sideways, sometimes.”

He squeezed his eyes shut. “But I’m not sad. There’s no reason to cry. I was laughing…”

“I can think of one or two reasons.”

So could he. Twin candle flames in the black. The darkness made him suddenly feel nauseated and dizzy, as though he was drunk.

Well, he _was_ drunk. They’d drunk nearly a bottle of red wine each. “Need to sober-“ he said, and gagged. His body didn’t seem to be able to distinguish between laughing and crying and now dry-heaving, the worthless, stupid piece of meat.

His insides spasmed again, and he felt the headache and dizziness of suddenly sobering up. Crowley. He tried to keep his shoulders down and opened his eyes, attempting to focus on the table, but their lunches suddenly looked like dead flesh.

_I do not sully the temple of my celestial body with gross matter._

Gabriel had said that. Years and years ago. Why was he thinking of it now? “I’m going to be sick,” Aziraphale managed to gasp. “I think the food’s off, I’m going to be- unh-“

Crowley must have come to his side of the booth, because suddenly Crowley’s hand was splayed open on his chest. The heaving stopped, and he felt a warm heaviness instead.

“You’re abssolutely fine. You won’t be ssick. You don’t feel ssick.”

Crowley’s voice was soft, every sibilant was soothing. Aziraphale’s eyelids drooped. The nausea was fading, and when he blinked his eyes open the table was clear and clean. Crowley was perched next to him on the edge of his padded bench. “’S that your hypnosis…?”

“Ssomething like it. You’re fine now. Everything’ss fine.”

“I felt sick-“ Saying the word made his stomach clench again.

“Food was a bit too rich when you’ve not eaten for a week. Nothing but bourbon biscuits. Which I have no patience with anyway. Custard creams are far superior.”

“Liar. You like Jaffa Cakes.”

“When was the last time I was able to eat a Jaffa Cake, eh? Snakes can strike four times in the time it takes for a human to blink, and I’m still not fast enough to snaffle a Jaffa Cake from you.”

“I’ll buy you a box. All for you. I won’t take a single one.”

“Now who’s the liar?” Crowley’s hand was still on his chest, and Aziraphale felt able to close his eyes again. This time the darkness helped clear his head a little, and the ache in his temples faded. “That’s it. Doing well, angel.”

“Please don’t,” Aziraphale said, but when Crowley began to pull his hand back Aziraphale caught it and pressed it to his chest. Mixed messages, he chided himself. “I’m sorry.”

“Shut up. Nothing to apologise for.”

“I’m so embarrassed. I look like a drunk old fool. Crying in a pub booth in the middle of the afternoon, honestly. What must they all think of me?”

“Who cares? They’d all be dead if it weren’t for you and your ineffability, wouldn’t they?” Crowley had been about to pull his hand away, but now he placed his other on Aziraphale’s back. He held Aziraphale’s heart between his hands, Aziraphale thought. “Besides, it’s sunny. Normal rules don’t apply when it’s this hot.”

“I suppose. … they’d probably wet themselves if they saw Raziel too.”

“Nearly did myself,” Crowley said, taking his cue from Aziraphale. “You want to talk about him?”

Aziraphale shook his head. He scrubbed at his eyes with the rough napkin. It hurt.

“No problem. Let’s head back to the bookshop. Chair and cardigan and cocoa and some terrible music.”

“That sounds wonderful. We still… still have to decide on our national anthem.”

“No, we’ve already picked that, but I’ll find you some colouring-in pencils and you can have fun with a coat of arms.”

“Very drole. … I don’t like _eating_, Crowley. It makes me aware of my body, and that makes me think of- well.”

“I understand. Luckily you don’t need to eat, do you? Drinking seems fine. It’ll get better.”

“Will it?” Aziraphale said, and closed his eyes against a fresh flood. “Sorry.”

“Told you to stop apologising. And yeah, ‘course it will. Early days yet. And with this fancy piece of paper we’ve got a reprieve. Plenty of time to work it out. Plenty of time to work everything out.”

“Like who I am,” Aziraphale said softly. “I don’t know who I am any more. I see my reflection and I don’t recognise who it is.”

He could _hear_ Crowley’s distress. Every external noise was amplified; he could hear Crowley’s slight shift on the leather seat, his careful exhale. “You’re Aziraphale. _I_ know who you are. … I’ll help you to remember. I mean, first and foremost, you’re a prat.”

Aziraphale’s fingers curled together around Crowley’s. “Takes one to know one.”

“There you go.”

“This isn’t _me_. I’m not _this_. I don’t know how to explain it.”

“Don’t need to. Not to me. … do you have a fucking problem?”

Aziraphale looked up; the latter was obviously not directed at him. A couple of the regulars were hovering near the table, looking at them. Aziraphale stiffened, and Crowley gripped his shirt even more possessively.

“Sorry to interrupt,” said one of the men. He looked like a farmer, with a red face and jeans and wellingtons. “Don’t worry, we’re not homophobic or anything. We were just wondering if that was your Bentley outside.”

A laughing sigh of relief shuddered out of Aziraphale; he sniffed, and squeezed Crowley’s hand in reassurance. “It is – it’s Crowley’s. Dearest, you go and talk car-talk and engines and upkeep and all that dull stuff, I’ll settle the bill.”

“You sure?” Crowley said, and Aziraphale gave him a gentle shove. “Right, yeah. Sorry, mate. We’re, er. On our way from the hospital.”

“Oh, no problem, sorry to hear it. Sorry to worry you,” said another of the men. “Steve and I, we’ve got no problems with it.”

“Yeah, no, exactly,” agreed Steve. “My wife’s cousin is, you know. So, is it a genuine 1926? I’ve never seen one in as good nick as that, and I go to car shows.”

Aziraphale paid at the bar. He watched as Crowley opened up the front of the car to show them the pristine engine, spoke to them about tires or something. He listened with half of himself.

It was very easy to turn himself into parts of himself.

In his hand was the parchment Michael had given to them. His thumb brushed over Raziel’s seal, and it felt like the breath of a whisper in his ear.

Gabriel’s breath had been hot in his ear too. _Aren’t you enjoying this? I would have thought given what everyone knows about you, you’d enjoy this._

Crowley wanted to help him. Aziraphale knew that, and he trusted it; the _desire _to help was genuine. But there were a thousand splinters in him, and how could he halve one in his own soul if the other half had to go into Crowley? How could he repeat what Gabriel had said, knowing that he was making Crowley imagine it too? How could he make Crowley think of rape when he heard the wind in the trees, or saw holly? Gabriel had inserted himself into so many of Aziraphale’s precious memories – if he shared that, would a ghost invade Crowley’s thoughts too when they reminisced?

Crowley, who was so kind, so much more patient than Aziraphale deserved. Crowley, beaming with pride as the two Oxfordshire men talked about how beautiful his Bentley was.

The sunlight shot his hair with russet and copper. He was grinning, and his teeth were white, and not fanged at all.

He looked like what he longed to be. Human and happy.

For the first time in his long existence, Crowley was free. And Aziraphale was ruining it for him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song which Crowley improves for Our Own Side's national anthem is 'God Save the Queen'!


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another slow, talky chapter, I'm afraid - though from this point, they'll all probably be slow, talky chapters!
> 
> I appreciate your comments so much, and I promise I'll reply to them as soon as I can! I have some serious non-fic writing and editing to be doing, so I have to rush right back to that, but thank you so, so much! <3

Aziraphale didn’t say much on the drive back to London. Every conversational sally Crowley made was answered with a dreamy monotone, and he eventually gave up. If Aziraphale’s knee hadn’t been bouncing up and down for the entirety of the journey he’d have wondered if he’d fallen asleep.

Once they were back in Soho, Aziraphale let them into the bookshop without a word. He unrolled the parchment on his desk, sat down, and began to examine it.

He wasn’t wearing his glasses. It made Crowley’s stomach twist.

He sat down, carefully, on the sofa. “Aziraphale?”

“Mm. Yes. I’ve been thinking. I think we should move in together.”

The fireworks didn’t even get off the ground; their charges were doused with cold fear. Aziraphale hadn’t looked up from the parchment. His lips were tight, and there was a line in between his eyebrows; his knee was still bouncing up and down. One hand was scrabbling across the desk to find a pen.

“Why?” Crowley asked. He did quite a creditable job of keeping the shock and confusion from his voice, he thought.

“For safety. We need to buy some land. As much as we can afford.”

“Land? I thought you meant here. The bookshop…”

“No, we’ll have to move out of London. Too many people around. Too much potential collateral damage. Think of how tricky it was just to summon the hellfire without hurting anyone.”

Crowley bit the inside of his cheek. “We have the hellfire now, though. Four flasks of it.”

“It’ll need a single perimeter – do you think? I’ll need to build the wall myself; there are wards, spells, various apotropaic… Bent entrances. I have Ned’s Crusader Castles book here somewhere – you and I have been in enough, we’ll work out which shape would be best.”

“Crusader castles-?”

“But it needs to be big enough for humans as well, and they need so much more space – food, sleeping-“

Crowley tasted blood. His heart pounded with hurt; he felt a dull, twisting pain in it. “Whoa, whoa. Angel. Pause.”

He’d thought that Aziraphale wanted his company. Wanted to finally move beyond their secrecy and fear, to just _enjoy…_ He had imagined, for a shining millisecond, that Aziraphale had been giving voice to what Crowley had never dared to even dream of.

But of course, he’d been wrong. Typical. Classic, really.

“Rewind for me. What are you talking about?”

Aziraphale finally looked up, and his eyes were blazing blue. “You’ve been right about everything. You were right that Heaven wanted the War, you were right that we shouldn’t have helped Gabriel. So I’m assuming that you’re also right about the next Big One. They’ve signed it together, see? Heaven and Hell. Heaven and Hell against humanity. So we need- it all depends on how much time we have. How many people we can convince.”

So. Aziraphale wanted to resume his position of Guardian of the Eastern Gate, except to protect the whole of the outside from everything inside Eden? Crowley’s head hurt. Were it not for his sunglasses, the light coming off Aziraphale would have hurt his eyes as well. “Slow down.”

“No, we don’t have the time to slow down! We need to start this _today_. They’re going to come again. I know that I’ll be completely unbearable to live with and I don’t want to inflict myself on you, but it’ll be so much safer together – I, I need to know where you are. Gosh, that sounds dreadfully controlling, I’m sorry – but that’s why we need space, you see? I need to protect us, and as many humans as we can-”

“Stop,” Crowley said with a voice like thunder, and Aziraphale stopped. Crowley stood up, took the parchment, and rolled it tightly. “What is this?”

“It’s the declaration of neutrality-“

“Not the bloody scroll, what is this?” Crowley gestured up and down him. “This _mania_?”

Aziraphale looked offended for a moment. Then his eyes slid away, and he looked at the floor. “I’m just trying to be proactive.”

“Well, don’t. You don’t have to. We’re safe.”

“Safe! We’re not _safe_ – we’ll never be safe! We’ll-“ Aziraphale’s face scrunched up.

“We’ve got their sigils to it now. We should be celebrating. Instead you’re suddenly sounding like Jim Jones.”

Aziraphale went as pale as his hair, and the fury was better than the crazed gleam that had been there before. Crowley put the scroll up on a shelf and sat down again. He leant forward, elbows on his knees. “I know seeing Raziel must have been rough-“

Aziraphale scoffed. “This is nothing to do with Raziel!”

“Oh, right, you’ve been planning Jonestown 2 for some time now, have you?”

“Don’t joke about such a horrible thing! I want to protect people! You said it yourself, they’ll attack humanity!”

“You’re talking about a commune and taking as many people with us as we can!”

“To _protect them_!”

“And when the angels breach the defences, we give the kids some Special Ribena?”

“_How dare you_?” Something crackled and sparked around Aziraphale, and Crowley suddenly remembered the _semantic errors_.

“Okay. You’re right. Bad joke. You’re right, I’m sorry. Calm down.”

“That’s how you think of me? Someone who would kill-“ Aziraphale took a deep breath, and the sound it made in his throat made Crowley think of a fish hook. “Oh, God.”

“Of course I don’t think of you like that.”

“I tried to kill a child. To protect people…” Aziraphale said, and Crowley felt the abyss yawn open between them.

“Shit! No! No, no – no, I was joking!”

“You were right.”

_Fuck, fuck, fuck._ “No – just this weird land idea! You know me, I sometimes say shit, I don’t think you’re-“

But of course he was. Aziraphale _was_ capable of killing a child in order to protect everyone else. Crowley had suggested and hissed it and Aziraphale had pulled the damned trigger.

Aziraphale’s face was completely blank. Crowley squinted, and he could see the angel’s aura being torn to shreds in front of his eyes. “Stop. Aziraphale, _stop_. We need to be rational. I was being a dick. You know me. The J stands for ‘Facetious’, yeah?”

“It’s no great stretch of the imagination,” Aziraphale said softly. “A rational extrapolation…”

“_Listen to me_-“ He reached out his hand, to show Aziraphale, but Aziraphale didn’t even seem to see it. “It’s different!”

“It’s not different! The principle is exactly the same – I am a _child-murderer_-“

Crowley clicked his fingers, and Aziraphale slumped forward in his chair, fast asleep.

He regretted it the instant he had done it. The rising panic which had throttled him and cut off his thought rose up to drown him instead.

_Fuck._

*

Aziraphale drifted out of a warm, deep sleep with a great feeling of comfort and calm. He blinked in surprise; he didn’t remember sitting deep in his sofa, with his paisley throw over his legs, but there it was. Crowley was next to him, holding out a cup of hot chocolate with little pink and white marshmallows on top; Aziraphale took it automatically, and smiled in thanks. “I’m so sorry, I must have drifted off. What were we…”

Crowley waited for him to take a sip of the hot chocolate. It was just on the right side of hot, warm without being burning; cooked with whole milk, just the way he liked it; not sickly sweet.

But inside he felt a rising swarm of bees – no, spiders, skittering up his insides. Ice water where his spinal fluid should be. A building, rising scream of steam from a kettle.

He understood the cocoa; he understood why Crowley was sitting next to him, glasses already off. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry-“

“You _put me to sleep?!_”

“It was an accident, I panicked, I’m sorry, I panicked-“

Aziraphale looked around for a coaster on which to put the hot chocolate, but Crowley had moved them and the tables away. “You- You cunning, wretched-“

“I know, I’m sorry. Please.”

Aziraphale shoved himself up out of the sofa, careless of how the cocoa spattered in his trembling, furious haste.

Crowley followed him up. “Please, angel. Please. Look at me. I’m so sorry.”

Against his better judgement, he looked, and Crowley’s eyes were as wide as a dawn sky. The rage bled away. The hot chocolate bled from the mug, all over his claret and cream Persian carpet. The empty mug bounced when it fell from Aziraphale’s nerveless fingers.

Crowley caught his elbows, but didn’t touch his skin. Didn’t come a step closer. “You were panicking,” he said quietly. “I couldn’t reach you. I couldn’t think. I didn’t think. It was wrong. I’m sorry. I’ll never again.”

Aziraphale was _tired_. He couldn’t be angry at another thing. It was easier to allow his pride to die a soft death than summon the energy for more anger. “It’s all right.”

“It’s not all right.”

“Then I forgive you.” Crowley still looked so anxious – so _wretched_, as Aziraphale had said. Aziraphale held out his hand.

Crowley’s moved down Aziraphale’s sleeve, and took it. Aziraphale could feel his remorse, his regret, his anxiety, and Aziraphale hated it. He hated that Crowley felt yet more pain because of him.

“No. Don’t do that,” Crowley said, turning their hands over. “Don’t. Look, tell you what, I forgive you for discorporating me when that hippo stood on me. We’re even.”

“That was six thousand years ago. That was a mercy kill.”

“I’d have got better. It was a flesh wound.”

Aziraphale could feel his spirit quieting. “Oh, well, if we’re _even_ now,” he said sarcastically, and he felt Crowley’s fondness. His love.

With a flick of Crowley’s fingers the carpet was clean, the mug full and on the desk. “Listen. Adam.”

Aziraphale didn’t pull his hand away, but he closed his eyes. Crowley’s calming press of warmth never wavered. “I can’t.”

“We have to. It’s tearing you up inside. There’s no point talking about anything else until we have.”

“I don’t want to talk about anything else either!”

“Yeah, I know. I’m hardly Mr Big Sharer myself,” Crowley said, and Aziraphale suddenly _smiled_, because he could feel through their joined hands that Crowley _actually believed that about himself_. “What?”

“Nothing. Nothing.” Crowley was drawing him slowly to the backroom, to sit at the table; Aziraphale finally opened his eyes.

On the table were several open books. “How long was I asleep?”

He could feel Crowley’s guilt through their hands. It was becoming easier to sense him. “A couple of hours. I know that… Sit down, let’s sit.”

Crowley was rarely this solicitous. It made Aziraphale nervous.

Crowley cleared his throat. “Adam. You think that pulling the trigger means that, morally you are a murderer. Right?”

The lights flickered. At least. Aziraphale thought they did. It might have been his own vision. “Yes.”

“Okay. You don’t think it was done in self-defence?”

“No. We would have survived the Apocalypse, so it can’t be self-defence.”

Crowley smiled, and nodded. “Exactly. Exactly. It was in defence of _others_. Innocents.”

“But Adam was innocent too.”

“We didn’t know that. You said it yourself. You thought he’d be Hell incarnate. He wasn’t a human child. He is _now_, because he rewrote reality to ensure it. But he wasn’t then. He was the Son of Satan. Because he didn’t _know_ he was actually an inhuman evil, the inhuman evil never got the chance to… you know. Mature. Develop. But… It did, for a while. I felt it. You must have felt it. All the rage and power and hatred – he was _going to do it._ You were just working with old information. Killing a demon to protect every human on Earth… that’s moral, isn’t it? And the potential: look-“

He brought one of the books around, and Aziraphale looked down to see the Hebrew of the Talmud. Crowley pointed out a passage.

_The Torah said that it is better that he should die now when he is still innocent, and he should not die later when he is guilty. This is because the death of the wicked is beneficial to them and also beneficial to the world…_

“Crowley-“

“No – he was sent from Hell to invade the World, right? Burglar Principle. If someone has come to kill you, you’re allowed to kill him.”

Aziraphale slammed the book shut and shoved it away. “He was innocent.”

“Because he made his innocence for himself. He moulded it. His nature, the nature that’s like you and me, it formed innocence in him until the innocence won out.” Crowley tightened his grip on Aziraphale’s hand. “Like you did.”

“I’m not _innocent_, Crowley.”

“Yes, you are.”

“I shed plenty of blood in the War,” Aziraphale said. He pulled his hand back and glared at Crowley. “I- I might not look like it now, but I was a dab hand with a sword. I pointed Adam and Eve out of Eden and I told them not to show their faces again.”

“And you then _gave them the sword_. You _chose_ to be compassionate. You willingly gave up that violent part of yourself. And I _know_, I’m the only one who can know, how much violence there’s been since then. How many times we’ve both nearly… And you never killed anyone. _Anyone_. Never obliterated a demon, never killed a human. When it came down to it you didn’t want to shoot him either. You stopped, and I shouted at you to kill him. All the time, I was the one telling you to kill him. Because I didn’t want to be punished by Hell. Then because I was squeamish. At least you tried to kill him to save people. I was a coward.”

“You stood against Satan for him.”

“So did you! And after you made me! It might be different if you hadn’t been willing to die yourself, but you were. I know you’re not _proud_ of trying to kill him, but do you think I’m proud of running? Of telling you that- that I was going to abandon you. That I wouldn’t even think about you. Do you think I’m proud of that?”

“Oh-“ Aziraphale said, interlaced his fingers with Crowley’s again. That seemed to be the only thing left to them, amongst the choking fumes of shame and guilt and self-loathing.

“What I’m saying is that when it mattered, we were ready to go. _With_ Adam, not against him. And together. I’m too sober for this. Aziraphale…”

“It was a human who stopped me. She had more moral courage than me.”

“No, she had a weaker stomach and an inability to comprehend the stakes!” Crowley said. “Everyone! Her brain couldn’t hold that. And if we’d been right, and Adam had been pure Antichrist, excited and raring to go to destroy the world, as we felt he had been… she’d have seven billion souls on her hands instead of one demonspawn.”

Crowley’s knuckles were white. His bony hands were hurting Aziraphale’s. “You… weren’t just willing to sacrifice your life for Adam and a handful of humans. You were ready to sacrifice the innocence you’ve been making for the last six thousand years. _Please_. If you hate yourself in every direction – for not being a perfect angel or a perfect human or a perfect anything… If you block every direction you could take with self-hatred then you just stand still. And suffocate. You won’t need to Fall to be in Hell. You’ll already be there.”

There were tears in Crowley’s eyes.

Aziraphale’s were dry.

Crowley swiped at his face, and stood up. He stacked the books: the Talmud and the Torah, the New Testament and the Catholic Catechism, Kant and Thomas Aquinas. “Stay there.”

He walked out, and came back a second later, putting a red book on the table.

“Adam gave you that,” Crowley said. “He gave you your whole bookshop back, and he gave you some mint condition first edition books about how fun it is to be a naughty child. Aziraphale. Is that something you do to someone who you hate? Who you’re afraid of? Who you think’s a murderer?”

“No,” Aziraphale whispered.

“No. So. I reckon that if me and Adam both agree that you’re not- not _wicked_, Aziraphale, not a murderer… We outnumber you. You’re outvoted.”

“Does my vote not count for more?”

“No. Your vote doesn’t count at all, really. If it’s a trial of your peers you’re wanting, the defendant doesn’t get a say. We do. We both say you’re innocent.”

Aziraphale covered his eyes with his hands. “They don’t say that anymore. They say ‘not guilty’.”

“We declare you not guilty. And we declare you innocent.”

Aziraphale refused to let tears fall. He’d cried how many times in one day? It was pathetic. Outrageous. He had never cried so much, and now he couldn’t go an hour without blubbing.

Crowley wasn’t touching him. How strange, how odd, how unexpected, to suddenly wish that Crowley was touching him.

“As for your walls and wards and… You said I’d been right before. All right. I’m right about this, then. And I’m also right when I say that we’re not even going to look at that parchment until you’ve finished every one of these bloody _Just William _books.”

“Oh!” Aziraphale looked up then, and dashed furiously at his eyes. “You’re being-“

“Utterly ridiculous, yeah, I know. But we need to slow your brain down. And as I can’t put you to sleep again...” Crowley’s voice was very brittle. “It’ll have to be bucolic, politically incorrect shit instead. We’ll talk about the rest later. Just… please.”

Aziraphale look in Crowley’s white, pinched face. His hair sticking up in every direction. The lavender thumb-smears under his eyes. “What do you need? To sleep?” he asked gently.

“After the four-day nap you gave me? I don’t think so.” Crowley paused. “A shower. That’s what I need.”

“I have one. And… you can turn it into some skin-sloughing chrome waterfall monstrosity. If you want.”

Crowley huffed, and touched Aziraphale’s shoulder. “I think I will. Thanks.”

“I’m not…” Aziraphale said. He reached up, and touched Crowley’s hand in return. “I don’t know what to do.”

“I know. That’s why I just told you. Read the book.”


	17. Chapter 17

Aziraphale’s bathroom looked like it had been installed in the thirties and hadn’t been touched since. This was because it had been installed in the thirties and hadn’t been touched since. However, Crowley refused to have a nervous breakdown under water pressure that was anything less than bruising, and by the time he was naked the bathroom was a haven of marble (white, for Aziraphale) and glass and chrome. The overhead waterfall created a cocoon of heat around him, while several water jets were surprised by their new existence and immediately started to beat Crowley to a pulp in revenge for the indignity. Perfect.

The thing he didn’t change or create was the soap. Aziraphale had been using the same soap for nearly two thousand years, when he could get it; the current bar was like a stone of jade, smooth and almost translucent, with a rich green centre.

Aziraphale had made the switch from Nabulsi soap to Aleppo on his way from Jerusalem to Rome and never looked back. Even after they settled in England, he’d paid merchants extortionate amounts for it, or bought bars of the stuff whenever he had any reason to be east of Greece. “It’s the laurel oil,” he’d said to Crowley once, when asked why they’d needed to take such a detour over some soap. Angels didn’t need to _wash_; purification was, literally, easier than breathing for them. “It makes the skin so soft – feel my hand, there? See?”

Crowley had felt, and he had seen.

There was pleasure in bathing the way humans did. A demonic miracle could never clean in the way an angelic one would, or even human hands could. Crowley washed the days from his hair until it squeaked. Then he sent the soap safely to the other side of the glass screen, and luxuriated. Tried to.

How stupid could he be? Aziraphale had asked him to move in with him, and- And he was right, of course. They’d be safe together. Less anxious – Crowley’d be less anxious, and Aziraphale had _said_ he’d be less anxious, so… Yeah. Sensible. Sensible to move in.

Finally, without the psychic pressure of Aziraphale’s panic skittering under his skin, he could think. _I need to know where you are_. That’s what Aziraphale had said.

He remembered being in the bookshop below, surrounded by flames. Reaching with every sense for some sign that Aziraphale was on Earth. Broadcasting on every frequency, so to speak. And the devastating nothingness where Aziraphale usually was, fussy and bright.

He opened his eyes, reminded himself that the heat he felt was from water, not fire. The jets suddenly reminded him of the fire hose, hitting him square in the sternum and throwing him back, and as instantly as they had been made they disappeared.

They’d had time. For the first time in their existences, they had been going to have time.

Then he remembered what else Aziraphale had said. _I know that I’ll be completely unbearable to live with and I don’t want to inflict myself on you…_ Now that… Was that performative English modesty, or did Aziraphale really think that Crowley wouldn’t enjoy more of his company?

Surely it couldn’t be that. Aziraphale was more introverted than he was, certainly, and Aziraphale sometimes gave a delicate little hint that he had things he terribly ought to get on with. A delicate hint had always been all that Crowley needed, and he hadn’t taken it personally. Aziraphale had once left a Cistercian monastery because it was too sociable.

But with Crowley… he had sought Crowley out more and more since the forties, for plays and concerts at which to fake a meeting, and then to restaurants. Even before that, in 1793, they’d dined for hours after that whole funny business with the Bastille. Even before that, they had drunk in taverns, and tavernas, and tea-houses and chocolate-houses and coffee-houses. In mead-halls. On city-walls between the two rivers. They’d drunk bissap and tej, and date-wine as the sun set over the Nile.

Fuck, he was confused.

He abandoned the shower, but left it standing. That was what humans did, he had gathered, when they wanted to leave hints that they were amenable to living together. A toothbrush left here, a scarf there.

Marking one’s territory.

That had been his plan, formed at the Ritz after their attempted executions. He’d thought – perhaps he’d been flattering himself – that once Heaven and Hell were off their backs, he and Aziraphale could… become closer. Whatever that meant. Whatever Aziraphale wanted it to mean.

It sounded farcical now, to think of _wooing_ Aziraphale, but that had been his plan.

Well, Crowley was nothing if not adaptable. He miracled a warm towel around him, and leant over the sink, staring at himself in the steam-fogged mirror. If he ever wanted to woo Aziraphale, there first had to be an Aziraphale to woo. If they really were safe from Gabriel now, their priority had to be sorting out those _semantic errors_.

Aziraphale had been better after seeing the medium and Anathema. He’d been worse after the pub, and his misjudged Jonestown joke. Crowley would have to start checking on his aura more regularly; that was the most obvious sign as to Aziraphale’s state of mind, and constantly asking him for miracles which could go horribly wrong would give anyone performance anxiety.

Then he remembered something else.

*

Aziraphale lasted longer than Crowley had thought he would. For eighteen hours he read, while Crowley occasionally made tea or cocoa, idly flicked through a book on protective magic, then just watched iPlayer on his phone as the world turned dark and light again.

“I can’t do it anymore,” Aziraphale said.

Crowley came back to reality (he’d just binged the first two series of _Peaky Blinders _without pause and was wondering whether he could pull off the haircut) and pulled his AirPods out. “What, read?”

Aziraphale’s aura was steady, if dim. Still grey and tattered, but no new tearing or writhing that Crowley could see. He rubbed his eyes and glanced at the clock.

“I’ve just finished the two hundred and fiftieth story,” Aziraphale said. “I can’t do it anymore. If I have to read about acting in yet another village play I’ll open one of the hellfire flasks.”

Crowley beamed at him. “Have you got to the one where William insists on being called ‘Him Hitler’ yet?”

Crowley remembered with fondness the knots Aziraphale had tied himself up in when the question had been raised about cutting the story out of future publication. He’d followed every single column and article* on it and had been so anxious his manicurist had almost driven him to tears telling him off over the state of his nails. On the one hand, it was impressive just how offensive one short story about a sweetshop could be to so many different people; on the other, Aziraphale was vehemently opposed to censorship. He’d seen too many book-burnings to have much truck with it on principle. “But Lord, it really is just terrible in every respect,” he’d moaned.

_(*Aziraphale read the Guardian, of course, except on Saturdays, when he bought the Telegraph. He said that this was see what Crowley’s side was up to, which was rich, but Crowley knew it was for the big crossword.)_

“Don't remind me, I already have a headache.”

“Can’t do anything else until you’ve read all of them. That was the deal.”

“Please. Let’s go for a drink.”

“It’s barely eleven in the morning.”

“Aperitif, before lunch. Your choice. Please.”

  
“Urgh, fine,” Crowley said. “I’m hungry anyway.” He wasn’t, but Aziraphale offering to leave the sanctity of the bookshop was a good step. Normality, he’d decided. Aggressive, uncompromising normality. Aziraphale retreated into what he knew when under pressure, so Crowley was determined to fill the yawning, gaping abyss which Aziraphale had been left with with all the mundane Earthly pleasures he liked so much. “Fancy the Savoy? If we walk it’ll bring us to noon.”

He conjured his old carpet bag, because he’d drink holy water before he wore a messenger bag, or a _rucksack_, Satan forbid. But it was big enough for the two flasks he wanted to carry.

He squinted in an attempt to see Aziraphale’s aura as he locked the bookshop, but the brightness of the sun washed it out entirely. “When is this going to break?”

“I thought you liked the heat,” said Aziraphale. “And I suspect that it’ll end once Adam has to go back to school.”

“I like the heat, I don’t like the tourists.” Aziraphale stepped out into Shaftsbury Avenue like he had a death-wish, and Crowley halted that thought, a black cab, and two bicycles with his hand. “Listen. I wanted to talk to you about-“

“Hold on, I want to go into Quinto,” said Aziraphale suddenly. “The Francis Edwards branch might have something new. Or they might be tempted by the _Just Williams_.”

“On the way back,” Crowley countered. “Then you can spend as long as you want. I’m hungry.”

Aziraphale looked at him suspiciously. “I won’t be five minutes.”

“On the way back. I promise. You said it was my choice if we went out.”

Aziraphale relented, with palpable frustration and minimal grace. Crowley waited until they were well past the racing green shopfront before he made his second attempt. “So. Um. After Raziel left…”

He glanced down to see how this landed; Aziraphale was staring straight ahead, with a tight jaw and flared nostrils. “I haven’t finished _Just William_ yet.”

“You wanted to come out and eat.”

“I don’t want to talk about it. Especially not _in public_.”

Crowley switched to Akkadian. “Just listen, would you? He froze us, right?” Aziraphale stopped, presumably to glare at him, and then carried on walking, a little faster than before. “Well, when he did, I’d been running to catch up with you, I was only on one foot, I was leaning forward-“

“In contrapposto. Do you remember when suddenly everything was in contrapposto? It was so exciting.”

“Don’t change the subject.”

“I know you had at least one sculpture made. Bronze or marble?” Aziraphale asked.

“Both. And no, it wasn’t contrapposto, I was overbalanced-“

“Ah, so like a passata,” Aziraphale said. “Though I think it’s called a flèche now.”

“A flèche? What- an arrow?”

“That’s what it literally means – in fencing, when you lean forward over your front foot and sort of run at them. Everything has to be in _French_ now, for some reason.”

“I know what you’re trying to do,” Crowley said, “and it doesn’t matter. I fell over. I grazed my hands. You healed them.”

Aziraphale stopped. Instantly there were tuts and huffs behind them, so Crowley pulled him out of the pedestrian flow, to stand between a tree and a red letterbox. “… after _Raziel_?” Aziraphale said.

“Yes.” Crowley showed his hands. “Look. No grazes. You healed them.”

Aziraphale frowned. “When we were in the road?”

“Yeah. You, um. You do remember?” Aziraphale’s face was an answer in itself. “My hands were bleeding. You healed me. Perfectly straightforward healing.”

Crowley almost wished he hadn’t brought it up; the fussy, prim denial had fallen away, and Aziraphale’s face was horribly open and vulnerable. Crowley looked over his glasses. “You can still do it. When you weren’t thinking about it, it worked perfectly. Trust me.”

“I do,” Aziraphale said. “I believe you.”

“That’s not what I meant. You can _trust me_.”

“I know I can, Crowley. More than anyone." Aziraphale looked down the road. "I thought you wanted to eat?”

“No, I want to _talk_.” Around them the flow of people slowed, and slowed, and slowed.

Aziraphale’s eyes were pale. “I don’t. Start it up again.” He waved his hand.

“You said we could move in together,” Crowley said, before his courage deserted him. “I want to. I want to do that!”

Aziraphale blinked at him, and looked away. “Then we can. We didn’t need to go to the Savoy for you to say that.”

“I want to talk about it though.”

“And I _don’t_. There’s no need. I’m not- I’m don’t need to share every nasty little thought that scurries through my head. There’s no need to put that on you. I’m sorry that I was so melodramatic about it yesterday, but I still think it’s a sensible plan, and that’s all that needs to be said.”

“Sensible,” Crowley said, and swallowed his hurt. “You say you trust me, but there’s just this… I can’t live in the same place as all _this_ in the air!” Aziraphale flinched, as though Crowley had struck him. “I know you don’t want to talk. But we have to. Get it out, lance it, whatever!”

“And then everything will be fine, will it? One good, cathartic chat, maybe a few tears, and that will sort out everything!” Aziraphale said in exasperation. Then, like a good swordsman, he went on the attack. “If you want to talk, why don’t we discuss why you haven’t been back to your flat since last Saturday?”

“Because I wanted to look after _you_!”

“Well, you did a marvellous job!” Aziraphale cried. “Well done!”

Time came to a full standstill around them, and Crowley staggered back as though Aziraphale had shot him. The tree blocked the sunshine and cast him in green shadow. “You think it was my fault?”

“Oh, no, we both know that it was all mine! You were the sensible one then, weren’t you? No, I was the one who said we should help Gabriel! Once again, you were right – right about Heaven and the War, right about Armageddon, right about the Nazis, right about which way the Revolution was going, right about Cromwell, right about- right about everything!”

“Yeah,” Crowley said. The pain in his chest was smouldering, then burning; it left his throat as anger. “And who saved you all those times, eh?”

“Oh, _you_. Always there to save the day, apart from the time it mattered!” Aziraphale looked shocked by his own words, but he stood up straight. Crowley had learnt that about him. Once Aziraphale committed, he _committed_.

Crowley exhaled through his nose, shoving down the snakey instinct to go for Aziraphale’s throat. “You think I could have stopped it?”

“No.” Aziraphale’s anger had crested like a wave, and Crowley saw it break. It mirrored his voice. It was clear on his face. “I know it’s irrational. I know it was inevitable once… but you- you _drove_. You drove there. You didn’t fly.”

Crowley held out his hands. “Oh, so, you wanted an aerial rescue? Against an archangel? Against the Archangel Gabriel?”

“I know! I _know_ it’s irrational. I know it makes no sense. I _told_ you I didn’t want to talk. I _told _you and you made us!”

“If I’d flown there we’d both have been discorporated. _Dis_, not _de_. You in Heaven, me in Hell, and they’d not let us go again so easily.”

“So,” Aziraphale said, now with ice in his voice, “did you _decide_ to arrive afterwards?”

“Of course not. Fuck you,” Crowley said. “I broke every fucking traffic law going to get to you!”

“But you didn’t _fly._ You didn’t fly and then perch in a damned tree until I discorporated him. You didn’t-“ Aziraphale looked away from him, mouth tight, eyes narrow.

“Didn’t run a kamikaze mission? No, Aziraphale, because I’m not a suicidal maniac like you!” Except he had, a voice in his heart whispered. He had. Wherever Aziraphale had called him to, Crowley had gone.

“Thank God one of us was, or we’d be in the front ranks fighting now.”

“As opposed to fighting outside a pub at noon, right, yeah,” Crowley snarled. “I was out of my mind. I was- I didn’t think of what would be faster because I _couldn’t think_. I just got in the car and drove. I’m sorry I’m not the perfect hero you want. I’m sorry life doesn’t work out like it does in the films, or your stupid novels. Welcome to the real world.”

“Don’t you dare,” Aziraphale said. “Don’t- don’t _reassure_ me one day and then throw it in my face the next. That’s not fair.”

“Well, I don’t play fair, I’m a demon. Speaking of which,” Crowley said, casting around for something barbed, something that would hurt, “as you think it’d be so easy, you claiming you’d have done the same? If it had been me? If Hastur had been buggering me into the undergrowth of Epping Forest you’d have flown in, ready to deck it out?”

Aziraphale was staring at him with eyes like wounds. “Yes!”

It stole the breath from him. It stole the earth from under him. The thought that Aziraphale’s reckless, heedless, thoughtless love for the world and humanity, with all its shit and sin and stupidity… The thought that Aziraphale would react so recklessly, heedlessly, thoughtlessly to save Crowley, with all his shit and sin and stupidity… That the idiocy of the love which Crowley felt was, according to Aziraphale, matched by his own.

Crowley had thrown the knife, and found it in his own lungs instead.

He was terrified. “Then you’re an idiot.”

Some part of him was pleased, to see the mortal blow land - the shitty, nasty, squirming, crawling part of him. The part that had been clamouring for meat since Aziraphale had rejected him at the bandstand. The part that had bared its teeth at the words _there is no our side_, and was now sated.

Aziraphale straightened, slowly. Tugged his waistcoat down. “I think we’ve established that beyond reasonable doubt. In many things, apparently.”

But then he waited. Crowley knew he was waiting for an apology, and he hated him for it. He hated Aziraphale for thinking better of him – for thinking him capable of apologising, for thinking him capable of grace. For thinking of him as worth saving, and then having the audacity to _only say it now_.

He barely knew why he was angry anymore. He only knew that he was _furious_. “Go on, then. Bye.”

He’d hated Aziraphale for waiting, and now he hated him for turning. And he especially hated him for leaving.


	18. Chapter 18

Aziraphale staggered past Leicester Square. Suddenly, Quinto was on his right-hand side. People appeared, with sudden bursts of psychic panic or delight or heartbreak or hunger, and were gone. The sky overhead grew darker: dove-grey, charcoal, black.

He recognised it. The disconcerting feeling of seconds slipping away from him, falling by unnoticed. Like he was dropping them as he walked. Moulting them like feathers. The memory of the loss of time now seemed aligned with _Tosca_, he thought dreamily as a wave of numbness washed over him. _Tu me disprezzi. Me ciaccoro._

An umbrella opened in his face. Crowley didn't love him. He had thought... But how much of that thought had been distorted by the fear and then the relief of the Apocalypse? What did love even mean? What did it signify? With another bound of time he was past the turn-off for the bookshop, so he just kept walking. Or did Crowley mean…

He couldn’t think. The world around him was so loud. He couldn’t _think_.

The change from dry to wet was instantaneous. One second he was on Charing Cross Road, with the sky ominously thundering overhead. The next, he was standing outside L. Cornelissen & Son, and the rain was like a solid mass around him. He stood, confused, heart beating fast. The pigment shop looked almost the same it had in 1855, and for a horrifying moment Aziraphale wondered whether time was jumping backwards as well as forwards. Then a car blared its horn at him, and he leapt out of the road to the pavement.

The car was red, but it wasn’t on fire. The man inside raised his middle finger as he drove past.

Aziraphale couldn’t see for the rain. He tried to make it sheer away from him, and the volume of it around him only increased.

But he knew where he was, for all that the world pulsed strangely, and clawed against his abdomen. He started East again – East, East, East he knew, he could manage East – up Great Russell Street, until the British Museum loomed vast to his left.

In the space where he was conscious, when the world became a slow and shadowy thing, Crowley’s words echoed in his head. _I’m not a suicidal maniac like you. Welcome to the real world. Then you’re an idiot._

He’d known that for eighty years now. He’d realised how in love he was with Crowley in 1941, and that night too he’d thought, how could you do this? How could you be so stupid as to fall in love with a demon?

But it had been so simple, to fall in love with Crowley, who was funny, and kind, and who had cared about the things Aziraphale cared about. Because he cared about Aziraphale.

His love for Crowley might have been simple, but it wasn’t easy. It was difficult, it was painful. His love for Crowley was like a fire – simple, and pure, and overwhelming – and it threw everything else in Aziraphale’s neat, compartmentalised life into disarray. It was devastating. It had devastated his heart, his heart more old than the horn that is brimmed from the pale fire of time…

Who was that? Yeats – no poet was so good for heartbreak as Yeats, he thought.

_Until the axle break_

_That keeps the stars in their round_

_And hands hurl in the deep_

_The banners of East and West_

_And the girdle of light is unbound,_

_Your breast will not lie by the breast_

_Of your beloved in sleep._

They’d so nearly proved him wrong, Aziraphale thought. They’d stopped the hands hurling banners, and kept the girdle of light bound… and Yeats had been right. It was all he wanted – for his breast to lie by the breast of his beloved in sleep – and it had only come when the only thing left in his breast was pain and poison.

He realised he was standing in the vast courtyard of the British museum, and he had no memory of the gates. Only of the hatred and scorn on Crowley’s face.

He looked up into the rain, and as though Crowley was next to him, he heard, _You can’t kill kids_!

Shelter. He needed shelter. His shirt was stuck to him, even through his cardigan and waistcoat. Water ran down the back of his neck. He shambled up the steps in time with the metre in his head. _Until the axle break. Until the axle break._

*

Time burst around him like water from a damn, and then ebbed back to its normal current. Aziraphale was gone.

Crowley turned on his heel and walked south, mainly so that he was walking in the opposite direction to Aziraphale. Stupid angel. Stupid, self-righteous, self-sacrificing prick! Aziraphale really did want to be the white knight on the white steed, didn’t he? Well, _sorry_ that Crowley was a bit cleverer than that. _Sorry _that he actually _wanted_ both of them to live!

Live _together, here_. If he had flown to Epping Forest there’d be two corpses there instead of one, the right one. Why couldn’t Aziraphale see that?!

He could see it.

Then why couldn’t he _feel_ it? Maybe if Aziraphale was in control of his sodding stupid emotions he wouldn’t be wanking magic all over the place, conjuring murder weapons out of thin air! A bit of _Stocism_, for fuck’s sake! Ever heard of it, Aziraphale?

Well, no. Aziraphale had never been a Stoic. Aziraphale was an Epicure, in the true sense of the word. Nothing to do with food. The cessation of pain. The stilling of anxiety. That’s what Aziraphale had always wanted.

What did an angel even know about pain and anxiety anyway?

No, that wasn’t fair. Look at Heaven. Look at Gabriel. Look at _Raziel_.

Fuck it, he didn’t _want_ to be fair! He’d had shit shoved in him plenty of times in Hell, and he’d never fallen to fucking pieces like this about it! It was fucked up, you bit the dick off, sloughed your skin, end of story. Not for fucking purer-than-driven-snow Aziraphale, though! No, no – he had to have a complete fucking mental breakdown over it, didn’t he?

Aziraphale who would rather die in glory than live, simply _live. _With him.

His feet had carried him to St. Jame’s Park. To where he’d been kidnapped by angels a week ago. To where he and Aziraphale had had that awful, sickening fight over the holy water.

He looked down at the carpet bag in his hand, which contained a flask of it, and a flask of hellfire.

Why had Aziraphale given him that damned holy water in the first place, that time in Soho? Crowley could almost have believed Aziraphale loved him back, then. _You go too fast for me, Crowley._ Tortoises went too fast for Aziraphale, let alone snakes.

Fuck, _fuck_, his head was all fucked up. Fat raindrops were beginning to fall, so Crowley conjured a black umbrella into his hand and stood under it. The humans around went running, screaming, laughing. Trying to find shelter from the summer storm.

He remembered Eden, as he always did when storm-clouds broke. The easy, simple way Aziraphale had stretched out his wing, and Crowley had huddled closer beneath it. No one had been kind to him since he had Fallen, and here was an angel who gave his weapon away to the disgraced humans, who had left himself defenceless against the demon who slithered up behind him, and who had then sheltered it instead.

The heaviness of the rain made the surface of the lake a flat, matte grey, lighter than the sky above it.

Why had Aziraphale done it? Why had the angel been so cruel, so heartless and callous, as to make Crowley fall in love with him? Had it been pity, that out-stretched wing, like the pity that made him give away his sword?

The thought of it triggered something. A memory. After St. Dunstan’s was bombed – Aziraphale had taken Crowley to the bookshop and washed his feet. He’d told him to soak them for an hour before he anointed them with balm of Gilead, and had read to him from a poetry book. Crowley remembered lying back on Aziraphale’s sofa, with victory in his heart and his feet so cool and soothed, making loud noises of disgust while Aziraphale recited the simpler, earlier poems he’d already memorised, and warmed the balm between his hands.

_A pity beyond all telling_

_Is hid in the heart of love:_

_The folk who are buying and selling,_

_The clouds on their journey above,_

_The cold, wet winds ever blowing,_

_And the shadowy hazel grove_

_Where mouse-grey waters are flowing_

_Threaten the head that I love._

Fuck.

*

Aziraphale squelched with fits and starts towards Room 6. He didn’t know why. Ah. Because Crowley had spoken in Akkadian. It made him think of the stone and the sand, and the reeds when the river rose. He used to be so quick with his wedge stylus – he liked circular plaques of clay, so he could turn both the clay and the pen. He had a box of tablets in the bookshop; he’d baked them and buried them for later.

The lamassu had looked so much taller, then. They had been colossal. He ran his hand over the stone, along the carved feathers. As though he was preening it. It was all grey now – the cinereous grey of gypsum. The feathers were no longer painted green and yellow; there were no longer flecks of red and white. Instead they were all edged with ultraviolet light, burning his eyes. The stone was so smooth, polished and perfect, but he could feel the prickle of holly in his palm.

He’d been furious with Crowley – Crawly, then – for telling them about the cherubim. He’d found the pagan humans’ interpretation of it hilarious, and Aziraphale’s outraged reaction even more so…

He’d turned into a lion in Jasmine Cottage, and a bull. What was _wrong_ with him? Everything was cut or ripped or burnt away from him. He felt barely conscious anymore. His brain had been torn to shreds – his mind, his soul, his essence. Whatever one called it. It was all gone. Soon he’d just be a shambling body. That fellow in Haiti had managed to create a zombie after all, just a week or so late. Cherub or Principality, all gone. All gone.

He sat down on the floor, leaning his head against the plastic shield. Rainwater puddled around him.

Water, water, water…_A_, in Sumerian. Just _a_. So much in Sumerian had been about water. Heaven was _an_, High Water. He’d often been addressed as Azu, meaning ‘physician’. _Someone who knew about water_. Not that these fine fellows were Sumerian – no, they were Assyrian. Much closer to Hebrew, Akkadian and Assyrian. He drew the cuneiform in the water on the floor.

Though it all, Crowley burning like a flame. Like the sun.

How could he have thrown those terrible thoughts at Crowley? He knew it was irrational, the screaming, desperate blame that sat lodged in his throat. He’d never wanted Crowley to know it. Not least because it wasn’t true.

He wanted to tell him that it wasn't true.

_Then you’re an idiot._

He couldn’t understand it. He loved Crowley. He loved him, he adored him, and he had hurt him. He was defective right down to his core. Right from the beginning.

He gradually became aware of people looking at him. He pushed himself up, hand splayed in the water. It made sense, that the Apocalypse had going to be started in fire. Light and heat and radiation. God had already killed the world with water, after all.

His body was shaking – funny, tiny little shakes. Was this shivering?

Aziraphale left Room 6, with the puddle of water and the whispering people and the idolatrous lamassu. _Find Crowley_, his brain stuttered. He had to find Crowley. Because his heart was melting like wax; the linen of his soul was unravelling, and he was dying.

No. _No._ The whole _point_ was that he didn’t want Crowley to feel more pain. Every second since Gabriel had pulled him from the bookshop, Crowley’s face had been drawn and tight with pain. Aziraphale’s fault. He felt that pain like needles in him. Guilt. He felt as though he’d been sick with guilt from the moment he was created. But today it was heavier than usual. It was a stone he carried in his mouth. It was chained to his hands and his feet. It sat in the bottom of his stomach like a bloody rock.

To leave the museum from Room 6 one had to walk past one of the gift shops. There was a pile of boxes in Aziraphale’s path. “Special offer,” he read out loud, to grip himself by the tatters of his mind and pull himself back into English. 

The box on special offer was a dal board, £99 cut down to £75. Aziraphale picked up one and turned it over. “The famous race game played by the kings and queens of ancient Ur,” the box proclaimed – and by children in the street, and women in the house while the washing dried, by drunkards and thieves and prostitutes, and most scandalously of all, by an angel and a demon on the roof of the ark.

His first thought was, _I must buy that for Crowley_. And then he remembered.

They were calling it the _Royal Game of Ur_. The humans didn’t even know the name of it – a game that had been played for millennia, and _they didn’t know_. Now only he and Crowley called it dal.

It was suddenly very, very simple. However long he lived, however long they had until the Next Big One, he couldn’t do it without Crowley. That was why he’d walked right past the bookshop, he suddenly realised. He wouldn’t have been able to bear how empty it was without Crowley. When had it happened? Why was he so damnably slow until he just… dropped into realisation? Like a stone into a pool.

He remembered playing dal in a bar in Uruk. He and Crowley had developed a variant called Sissi-dal, in which you had to take one drink for every white corner. Drink for landing on a rosette. Finish your drink every time a piece won the race. The winner got steadily drunker, which evened the odds and appealed to Crowley’s sense of fairness. 

And now Gabriel was there. He moved like a sword through the memory, and the edges of it glowed ultraviolet. The clay cups were broken, and the wine in them was blood, pouring out, dripping down Aziraphale’s thighs. Gabriel smashed the board, and the pieces evaporated in grey and lavender dust, like ash rising…

“Sir,” someone said at his side, “Sir, I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

“What?” Aziraphale said. The English jolted him back to the present reality. The drops which fell from his hair were now salty, and warm… He wiped at his face, blinking to clear his vision, and looked around.

He took in the black epaulettes and the keys hanging from the belt. He noticed the whispers and the stares around him. “Why?”

“I’m afraid I got a call on the walkie-talkie about a man of your description touching one of the exhibits. You can’t be in here if you’re under the influence, sir.”

Deeper, brighter consciousness brought deeper, brighter pain with it. “How _dare_ you?” Aziraphale said. “Under the influence? It’s the early afternoon! I’m not _under the influence_.”

“Sir,” the security guard said quietly with an apologetic smile. “You’re getting upset, and it’s upsetting the other visitors.”

“I’m emotional, not drunk!” Aziraphale said. The aching pain hardened into anger, and the anger was a relief. “Is a- a- is someone not allowed to _weep_ now? Is that no longer allowed? Was a law passed?”

“Sir. I’m going to have to ask you to stop shouting.”

“I’m not shouting!” shouted Aziraphale. “I’m going to buy a board game, if you’ll stop harassing me for five minutes! None of you even know what it’s _called_, for Heaven’s sake- for Heaven’s sake, oh, oh God-”

“Sir, I am authorised to call for police assistance if you don’t willingly leave the premises-“

“For what?! For buying a board game! Orwell was right,” Aziraphale said. “I am _stone-cold_ sober.” The security guard looked sceptical. “I’m not drunk! I want to spend an absolutely extortionate amount of money on a board game – if you want to call the police in, actually, please do, because this is _daylight robbery_!” He dropped the box. “Seventy-five pounds for a dal board!”

The security guard’s hand closed around his upper arm.

Gabriel gripped his wrist and twisted his arm back, and up.

There were shouts around him. Aziraphale had flung the guard backwards into a pile of Rosetta Stone jigsaw puzzles.

People were holding up their smartphones. The guard unclipped his walkie-talkie from his belt.

Aziraphale reached out. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry-“

“I’ve got a drunk and disorderly in the ground floor gift-shop-“

“I didn’t mean to, I don’t know what just happened-“

“By the main entrance, requesting immediate assistance-“

Aziraphale ran.

He almost fell down the front steps in his haste. They were slippery from the torrential rain over his head. He could barely see, it was so thick around him.

Another security guard tried to block the gate; Aziraphale pushed him aside as gently as he could. He had a stitch in his side like a stab wound. He kicked up water as he ran.

*

Crowley had stayed in St. James’s Park until the rain stopped, and for another hour after that. But when he came to the bookshop, the lights were off.

He banged on the door. “Aziraphale! Aziraphale, are you-“ He closed his eyes, and pulled his hand back. He wasn’t in there, that much Crowley could feel without effort.

There had been no other angels here since Gabriel. No demons. He was just _tired_. He could feel Aziraphale like a stone in a shoe – on Earth, alive, but small. Not far away, but _small_.

He was tired. He needed to sleep. He would sleep, and then he would think.

He’d just wanted to help Aziraphale.

No. He’d wanted to _fix_ Aziraphale.

And instead he’d said that Aziraphale was an idiot for loving him. Because that’s what it was, surely? It had to be love. Love beyond Standard Angelic Issue Love. Real love.

Aziraphale had as good as told Crowley he loved him, and Crowley had called him an idiot for it.

Crowley got into the Bentley, and rested his forehead against the steering wheel. It was true. Only an idiot _could_ love Crowley. But for one second he could have had the thing he’d wanted most, for six thousand years, and he’d…

He wanted to drink. He wanted to drink until he passed out, and it’d be easiest to do that in his flat. Presumably Aziraphale was in a church or somewhere else Crowley couldn’t go. Like when he’d been pissed off at Crowley over making him miss the Battle of Camlann and fucked off to Ireland for a century to sulk.

Purely out of habit, he turned on the music.

_Save me, save me, save me_

_I can’t face this life alone_

_Save me, save me, save me_

_I’m naked and I’m far from home_

He left it on as he drove over the river. The Bentley decided to play it on repeat, to add injury to injury. He worked very hard not to think about Aziraphale, and instead to think about how much booze he had in his flat, and how he was going to drink every last drop of it.

The lift was out of order, with a puddle of water around its base. Good. Crowley hoped someone slipped and broke their neck, or that a spark killed them.

He heard Aziraphale as he climbed the stairs, long before he felt him; the angel was so closed in on himself. His voice was quiet, pitiful, but Crowley would have known it anywhere. “Crowley, please. I’m so sorry. Please open the door. I’m sorry.”

Crowley began to run, taking the stairs two, then three at a time.

“I know it’s your flat. It has the snake… Please. I’m so sorry. Please open the door? Please just…”

Crowley reached the penthouse floor and skidded around the corner. Aziraphale was sitting on the concrete, head pressed against the frosted glass door. Water pooled around him.

Aziraphale looked up. “Crowley…?”

“Hey,” Crowley said, and he felt his face twist. “Um.”

“I tried to buy a dal board for you,” Aziraphale said. He wasn’t crying. Crowley thought he could probably cope with crying better than this not-crying. The not-crying was terrible. Aziraphale’s eyes were the colour of the rainwater on the concrete. “Crowley, I need help.”

“What do you think I’ve been trying to do?” Crowley asked, and could have cut out his own tongue as Aziraphale sagged, like a puppet whose strings had been cut. Crowley fell forwards. Fell to his knees. “No, no, no. I will. I will. Of course I will. Of course I will, angel.”

Crowley pulled Aziraphale to him. He was soaked to the skin. “I need help. Please help me,” he said into Crowley’s shoulder. “Please help me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We genuinely have no idea what the Royal Game of Ur was called, so I've just called it 'dal', which is the Sumerian for 'foot-race'. The poems which Crowley and Aziraphale quote are both by Yeats, because they share that single brain cell.


	19. Chapter 19

Crowley pulled Aziraphale to his feet as soon as he thought he could risk it. Aziraphale, sodden and shivering, was a dead weight against him.

Whatever Aziraphale had seen in the trenches hadn’t been enough to make him try to reconcile with Crowley. Whatever had been in his head for the last few hours had.

He’d never felt Aziraphale shivering before.

But when had he been so close as this? Only in snatches. Only in hard-won moments. Only when the drink had been in them both, usually.

“In we go,” Crowley said. He’d not been inside the flat since he’d left it the morning of their executions; the sofa and coffee table were still there, along with the wine glasses and potted plant and chess pieces which they’d used to work out their plan. He cleared it all with a wave of his hand.

“Get it wet,” Aziraphale said flatly.

“Doesn’t matter. See?” Crowley said, and a thick, black towel was in his hand. “Nothing to worry about. I’ve got as many as we need. I can pull one out of your breast pocket, if you want.”

“That’s cheating.” Aziraphale was staring steadfastly at the floor. His arms were wrapped tightly around himself. “I think I broke your lift…”

“I’ll fix it.” Crowley spread the towel on the sofa, and gently pushed Aziraphale down. A new towel appeared in his hand. “You just sit.”

“I’m sorry.”

Crowley couldn’t see Aziraphale’s aura at all. From him, Crowley felt an absence. It was a negative feeling. It was like the space within an open wound. But Aziraphale was looking up at him. Straight at him. He sank down onto his knees in front of Aziraphale, and took his hands. Aziraphale didn’t pull away, and Crowley let him feel how angry he _wasn’t_. “I know. I’m sorry too.”

“I lied to you.” Aziraphale was tight with misery. “I’m glad you weren’t there."

“I’m not. You must know that. That’d I’d have done anything to- not just get to you, Aziraphale. To _save_ you. That’s the difference. I can’t look after you if I’m dead. If we’re separated.” He swallowed, and tried to decide how much to say. But Aziraphale had sacrificed all his pride to come here, and he’d been banging away on the bookshop door as well, and that was crucial, wasn’t it? “I felt what it was like, when you were discorporated. It didn’t used to be like that. We could go for centuries without seeing each other. But for a thousand years I’d never reached out and not been able to find you. Didn’t know it’d hurt that bad.”

They were the two loneliest creatures in existence, without each other. They were a new species, in spirit if not in essence.

Aziraphale must have thought it too, or something similar, because Crowley suddenly felt his fingertips like ice on his cheek, just for a second. “That. And all of it. All the rest. I didn’t want you to see me like that – see him on me, see me with that rock-“

Crowley felt the hurt flare up again. “You think I would have _cared_?” he said.

And then he caught himself.

Aziraphale had lashed out in pain, and Crowley knew _that_ well enough for sure, and he’d lashed out right back, with added barbs. And Crowley could punish Aziraphale for it again, now – he could challenge each word, they could thrash out exactly what each of them meant and believed and why they’d both thrown such hurtful untruths at each other…

And Aziraphale would be just as broken inside. Just as divorced from himself. Knowing now that the person whom he had begged for help and forgiveness had thrown his mistakes back in his face instead. And he would stagger into the dark, alone and forsaken, and Crowley didn’t know if he would ever see him again.

No. He would not allow that. He could never allow that.

Always, both of them had been offered anger when they had needed gentleness. He wouldn’t be like that – not to Aziraphale. He would be kinder than Heaven. He would be better than God.

He forced softness back into his voice. “You think it would change how I think about you?”

“Yes,” Aziraphale said, seriously. Solemnly. Crowley could feel the sincerity in Aziraphale, and it hurt more than a lie would have. That Aziraphale _truly believed_ someone would think less of him for what had happened. That _Crowley_ could. “I need one of us to know who I am. I thank God you weren’t there. I prayed to God to keep you away.”

“Oh, angel.” Anger was hot and red in his chest, like a volcano ready to blow. And then it faded away – cooled to nothing but sadness, aching sadness and aching protectiveness. “God’s not listening to us.”

“I know. I prayed anyway. I prayed to God to stop you from being there. At least then I knew you were safe. I couldn’t have borne it if you’d been in danger too.”

“I couldn’t bear it,” said Crowley. “Not knowing. Ngh. Or knowing that every option was so shit. I couldn’t think of what was worse than him pulling you up to Heaven.”

Aziraphale nodded. “It was the right choice. I know that. I _know_ that.” The _shame_ in Aziraphale’s voice leeched the last remains of any anger from him. Heaven had always wanted Aziraphale to feel ashamed. “I thought of it, if it had been you… You said it’s been you. I didn’t know. I didn’t know-“

“Shush, I know. Come on. Like I’d have told you. It was millennia ago. _Millennia_. Not since we’ve been friends.”

“Really?” Aziraphale said. His voice was cracking, and Crowley suddenly realised how the thought had been weighing on the angel.

“Really. I’ll tell you all about it later. Anything you want to know. When you’re warm and safe and dry.”

“Safe now. Getting there on the others,” Aziraphale said, and just like that, all the anger and hurt was gone. Even after a fight as awful as the one they’d had, Aziraphale felt safe here. With him. With a demon.

“Yeah, I will if you stop bloody interrupting me,” Crowley said, in the same tone of voice he’d used when Aziraphale had offered to play the magician – the same when Aziraphale had asked him to draw his moustache on. He creaked upright, and began to dry Aziraphale’s hair with the towel and a studied nonchalance. He could have miracled it dry, but… But this way he didn’t have to see Aziraphale’s eyes. And Aziraphale liked to do things the human way. He appreciated the rituals. He appreciated the care...

How many times had Aziraphale seen the wretched and punished, the disgraced sinners, and responded to them with radical, unhesitating compassion? And now he needed that himself, there was no one in the whole universe who would give it to him. Other than Crowley.

It made him furious. The anger at Aziraphale had vanished, replaced by a far greater, far less acute rage.

He kept it deep in his spine, far below the skin. “That’s better,” Crowley said. “Do you want me to dry your clothes? Or I can make something snugger?”

“… maybe a blanket? Maybe just… I don’t know why I’m so cold.”

“You’re soaked. Not used to it.” Crowley thought all the cruel water away, thought Aziraphale’s clothes _soft_ and _warm_ and _familiar_.

Gabriel had vanished them away like they were _nothing_.

Crowley packed his fury into a woollen blanket. Let the heat of it bleed out of him into the fibres.

Aziraphale jumped when Crowley arranged it around him, and he nearly cried then. “I tried to make it tartan,” Crowley said. “The grey with the blue and red and… I’ve probably got the stripes in the wrong places.”

It was Aziraphale who burst into tears instead, with no preliminary twisting of the face or sniffing – the blink of recognition, and then wailing.

Crowley stared down at him helplessly; his brain refused to respond, but his body decided for him. Unhesitating compassion. He wrapped his arms around Aziraphale, one hand cradling the back of his head against his chest. With a thought his shirt and jacket were gone, and with another his wings were out.

Crowley let all the love in him rise to the surface of his skin. Through it he could feel Aziraphale’s disbelief that Crowley had _noticed_, that anyone had cared enough to notice, that anyone would be so kind to him, and after that wretched, awful fight – that fight like shards of glass in his heart, how did Crowley not hate him-?

“Shush. Shush. Of course I don’t. How could anyone? It’s all right, it’s all right…” Crowley brought his wings around them both, and wrapped them in kind darkness.

*

Crowley was lying on his sofa, vaguely wishing he’d manifested a less fashionable, more comfortable one.

Aziraphale was lying along him, a warm weight, his head on Crowley’s bare chest.

If he gave his brain even a second of thought, he’d lose all courage. He’d surrendered the reins to his body, which seemed to have a far better idea of what it was doing, and was even behaving itself to boot.

Mostly. Visibly, at least, though it had decided to kiss Aziraphale’s hair.

“I’m so sorry, Crowley.”

Crowley made a noise of protest. “Pfft. No need. It’s all fine.”

“It’s not. I said such awful things. I threw them at you because you wanted to talk – it’s unforgivable-“

“Oh, shush,” Crowley said, and his body kissed Aziraphale’s crown again for good measure. “We’ll be unforgivable together, then.”

He was sure he felt Aziraphale return the kiss above his heart. He would have thought he’d imagined it, if Aziraphale hadn’t frozen afterwards.

No. No thought. Thought had nearly ruined them – he could see it trying to ruin Aziraphale now. He let his body idly stroke Aziraphale’s feathery curls instead. “It’s all right…” It was like calming a spooked horse, and Crowley had spooked plenty of horses in his time. “How’d you get here? Did you take a taxi?”

Aziraphale shook his head. “Walked. I think. I ran, at the beginning. I thought the security guards were chasing me…”

“What security guards?”

“British Museum. They wouldn’t-“ Aziraphale sighed; Crowley felt it, warm on his skin. He might have to manifest clothes again if he wanted his body to keep being on its best behaviour. “They wouldn’t let me buy the dal board…”

“Yeah. You said. I’ll make you one.” He kept one hand on the back of Aziraphale’s head, keeping it safe, and reached out with the other. A block of solid gold rose out of the top of the coffee table. “How many squares was it?”

“Twenty. Two by three here, then two in the centre, then four columns of three.”

“And the safe squares?” Crowley touched his fingertip to the squares Aziraphale indicated, and flowers of lapis lazuli and ivory bloomed. On the other squares were pietra dura apples of carbuncle, snake’s eyes in citrine and jet, small circles of inlaid turquoise. Crowley pulled power up and formed tetrahedrons of emerald, each with two points of white quartz. Counters of alabaster inlaid with more lapis, and obsidian inlaid with rubies. “There. I bet that’s better than whatever they had at the British museum.”

“It’s very different to one the we first played with,” Aziraphale said sadly. “Chips of wood. You carved the board into the roof, once it stopped raining. It was all rotted… Tar everywhere.”

“You couldn’t get it out of your robe.”

“No. And you won fourteen times in a row before I realised you were cheating.”

He nearly said that Aziraphale had been more innocent in those days. He swallowed the words. “I won’t this time.”

“I know. … but he’s in it now, Crowley. In the memory. Raking through the blue, destroying the board. I can’t stay long enough to put it right. I have to run, before I remember the forest.” Aziraphale was looking at him so helplessly. “Do you understand what I mean?”

“I’m trying to. Do you mean you see him there? On the ark – on the water?”

“Yes. And no. He’s just _there_. His touch is on everything. Do you remember the smell? Once the rot had gone, and it was just water? The smell of all that water? I can’t, now. I just remember the smell of the mulch. The leaves.”

“Don’t think about it,” Crowley offered helpfully. “Let’s play instead.”

“You wouldn’t speak to me for the first month. We just watched the corpses bobbing on the- I wanted to agree with you, I wanted to say that I couldn’t see the love in any of it, but I was too cowardly-“

“Doesn’t matter now. I knew you knew. I wouldn’t have spoken to you again if I hadn’t known that. And you were… I didn’t realise until just now, how soon it must have been after Raziel.”

Aziraphale made a noise of distress. “The flood was to wash away the Nephilim. Whomever Gabriel hadn’t been able to… You said that you had. Um. That in Hell, demons had.”

“I did.” Crowley’s fingers didn’t stop stroking Aziraphale’s hair. “Last attempt was after I got discorporated at… Cannae, I think? Yeah, Cannae. Some lucky sod with a slingshot. Anyway, while I was down, some chancer tried to have a go. Ripped her cock off, then one of her antennae just to make my point clear. That won’t grow back… Um. Last successful one was… Wasn’t when the whole Sea Peoples thing went down. Who was king before Tudiya?”

“No one. Can you remember who was Pharaoh? If it was around the same time as Tudiya that’d be the Old Kingdom. Fourth Dynasty.”

Crowley waved his hand dismissively. “I don’t think of it in all that. I think… Menkaure when I went down, Shepseskaf when I got back up.”

Aziraphale uncurled his fist, and placed his hand flat over Crowley’s heart. It was warm, now. “I didn’t know.”

“I know. I avoided you. I wouldn’t have told you.”

“Would I know them?”

“Doubt it. Not personally, you might have something about him in a tablet. Ig-alima. One of the _gallu_. Still, got my revenge. He who laughs last laughs longest.”

“How?” Aziraphale’s voice was very small.

Crowley kept his own matter-of-fact. It was a comfort, to be able to stroke Aziraphale’s hair. “One of the signifiers of status in Hell is how notorious you are on Earth. The more scared people are of you up here, or the more famous you are, the more credibility you have down there. I’m nothing at all in terms of power or rank, but that notoriety has kept me relatively safe through the years. And giving the credit to, you know, Himself, that kept me in his good books. Or technically his Not Entirely 100% Shit Book. He invited me for a private dinner after _Paradise Lost_.” Crowley shuddered at the memory. “Gave me a crown. No actual rank, of course, because then everyone else would get all snitty, just the crown. Got it under the bed somewhere.”

Aziraphale tried to gather the pertinent threads from all this. “And no one knows about Ig-alima anymore. Very few know about the _gallu_.”

“Precisely. For at least two thousand years he’s had to cede the floor to _me_. And he’s grown dull. Solid. They all do, down there. But me and you have only gotten sharper.”

“_As iron sharpens iron, so a man sharpens his friend_,” Aziraphale said. He looked around at Crowley. “I’m sorry.”

“Not your fault,” Crowley said, holding his gaze. “None of it.”

“That nasty scene by Leicester Square was at least half my fault.”

Crowley was finally able to grin. “At _least_. … you can talk to me. You can trust me.”

“I know. I do.” Aziraphale’s chin was resting on his sternum, and his eyes were like the sky. “I do.”

“Then-“ Crowley said, and stopped himself.

“Go on. I know I’m not… I want to earn your trust.”

Crowley groaned, and rolled his eyes. “Shut up. I trust you. Urgh. Fine. Why do you think I wouldn’t want to live with you? You _said_ it. And you said you’d throw yourself way for a vain hope that… That’s why I didn’t fly. I wanted to live. To live _with you_.”

Aziraphale looked down, and focused his gaze on the hollow of Crowley’s throat. The snake in him clamoured at such attention being shown to his neck. “I never even let myself imagine it. Living with you. When I said that I genuinely- It wasn’t a _lie_. I thought, if I was going to die… Dying trying to save you would be a better way than most.”

“To die by your side… You been listening to the Smiths, angel?”

“The who?”

“No, the Smiths. Doesn’t matter.”

“I never imagined that we’d survive it,” Aziraphale said. “The world was going to end, and then… I thought we’d die on that airfield. Then on the bus you hijacked. I thought we were going to die.”

“I know. I remember the blood... I think I’m a bit of an optimist.” Crowley said this as though it was a great personal failing. “But you’ve always worried. Always fretted…”

“And then even if we did survive. Even before this, I thought that… well. That you preferred me in small doses. That I exasperated you.”

“_What?_”

“I’m fussy and old-fashioned and you like change and new things and-“

“And you! You more than anything! Feather-witted, idiotic- I was afraid of going too fast for you!”

Aziraphale shook his head. “I’ve never been- Eventually everyone gets sick of me. That was before Eden, for most of Heaven.”

“I’m not _most of Heaven,_” Crowley said, and his voice was low and dangerous. “I never get tired of you. Custom cannot stale your infinite variety…”

Aziraphale softened against him. “I noticed that he stole that line from you.”

“It was yours. I just said it.”

“Seductive old serpent,” Aziraphale whispered.

Crowley had several thoughts in that instant: most were like an audience of idiotic men, all shouting _Nice! Get in there!_ at him. He would later thank the small, still voice of reason who said _Not too fast, not too fast…_

So instead he just said, “Flatterer.” Aziraphale’s forehead was too far away from him to kiss in this close, hitherto-barely-dreamt-of position, and Crowley didn’t want to risk it. But the urge was there. “And even if I did get annoyed, or want some time to myself… Much more likely that _you’d_ want time for _yourself_, you hermit. That’s normal. The point is knowing where to come back to.”

Aziraphale looked like the hope was physically painful for him. This close, skin to skin, Crowley knew it was hope. “Now there’s this. Now I can’t even do magic.”

“_Miracles_, angel, remember? And good. That means I can do them for you.”

“I’m useless. I’m barely an angel anymore.” Crowley could feel the stone in his own throat, and had no idea whether it was telepathic or empathetic or just his own raw nerves. “Not an angel, not a demon – not even a human.”

“Whatever you are, I am too. You’re Aziraphale. You’re my best friend. You’ve been the guardian angel of humanity since they were created. We’re their godparents.”

“Am I still? I don’t feel like I am. How can I protect them now?”

“We can’t. Not a godparent’s role. We had to equip them with knowledge and send them on their way. We’ve done that. Now we can…” Crowley shrugged, and smiled. There was wonder on Aziraphale’s face. “Just exist. The two of us. You’ll get your powers back; we’ll sort it out. We’ll be all right.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I rewrote this chapter four times and I'm still not happy with it. In the end I just had to put some Hozier on repeat and grit my teeth. I did, however, find a British Museum "Royal Game of Ur" second-hand for £20, so I do have that going for me. Can confirm that it is extremely playable - got several strangers playing it in a 400 year old pub, which felt very suitable.
> 
> Crowley's "I remember the blood" is a cheeky reference to my fic "The Relief of Hopelessness".


	20. Chapter 20

They were, for a while, or tried to be. Crowley began to move his few physical items into the bookshop, where he claimed the bedroom as his private territory. Aziraphale took the bathroom. He also bought a tasteful leather satchel, to carry his two flasks. Crowley bought a Montblanc briefcase for his.

Aziraphale didn’t open the shop much. He only did when Crowley was in the same room, and he closed it again as soon as Crowley went out, whether or not Aziraphale accompanied him. He crossed out all the bookfairs and auctions from his calendar, and Crowley worried.

This was meant to be their time of _freedom_. Of choice and independence. Instead, Aziraphale remained afraid, and unable to do much in the way of magic (he could now switch on the kettle from across the room, but only if Crowley wasn’t watching). And Crowley worried, and every time he tried to leave Aziraphale alone in the bookshop he remembered the icy stab of fear that had summoned him back. When Gabriel took him.

They needed to get out of London. They needed a fresh start.

When he was stressed, Crowley cut his hair, manifested new clothes, went somewhere new. When the world upset him, Aziraphale retreated to the cloister or a temple or a hermitage – or, more recently, his bookshop – anywhere that the world was quiet, away from the psychic press of human life. Places of regimen or ritual, where he knew what each day would bring, until he could gather the mental strength for the next sally that was demanded of him.

During the mania that had followed Raziel’s visit, Aziraphale had instinctively said that they had to leave London, and find somewhere easily defensible in the countryside. _Aziraphale_ suggesting a dramatic change was rare; they’d been in London for five hundred years, give or take the odd decade or two elsewhere, Aziraphale was happy here. So Crowley worried.

He brought it up when they were eating a relatively disappointing meal at the Criterion; Crowley improved their wine for them, and Aziraphale smiled at him in thanks. The last time he’d tried that himself he’d turned it into vinegar. “So, I’ve been looking at houses,” Crowley said.

Aziraphale blinked in surprise, and put down his glass. “… you don’t like the bookshop?”

“You know I love the bookshop.” Crowley nearly choked on his own honesty. “We wouldn’t have to sell it. It’d be nice to have a pied-à-terre in London. For the theatre. Proper restaurants. But outside we could… have a garden. A walled garden.”

Aziraphale looked down at the remnants of his meal. “I thought you hated the idea.”

“No, I hated where it was coming from. I hated how upset you were. But after all this – you know, eleven years of stress – I thought I could use a change of scenery. You know me. I was thinking near the sea, maybe. South coast.”

Aziraphale was _shining_ at him. He reached out his hand, and Crowley took it without hesitation. He felt the warmth of the angel’s gratitude, and a burgeoning hope. “You wouldn’t find it dreadfully dull?”

“I could absolutely do with a few decades of dull,” Crowley said. “I’m knackered.”

Crowley felt tendrils of worry, and ghostly hints of memories that were not his own – collecting post, the old Victorian rooms, assuring a landlord that they were still in use… And fear, cold terror, beneath them. “You want to sleep?” Aziraphale whispered.

“No. No,” Crowley said, and wanted to kiss Aziraphale’s hand in reassurance. He didn’t. “I promise. Not for more than a few hours at the most. I won’t leave you alone.” He smiled at the relief that was plain on Aziraphale’s face. “And that’s absolutely a threat.”

They held hands often, now; they had grown more and more attuned to the touching of spirits through skin. After so many miscommunications they both needed the reassurance of feeling the emotion behind a word or a glance. Crowley always let Aziraphale initiate it – always let him reach out first, lest Crowley accidentally remind him of Gabriel.

But today, as they left the bejewelled restaurant, Crowley took Aziraphale’s hand, and was surprised that the whole world wasn’t blinded by the joy on Aziraphale’s face.

*

Crowley’s flat was completely empty, save for a deep, plush carpet and cushions where a throne had once been, two glasses, several empty bottles of wine, and an extravagantly decorated, solid-gold dal board.

In three hours, at 9 am, Crowley would hand over his keys to the new renters, because he needed _some_ outlet for his evil and being a landlord would suit for the time-being.

But before that, he had some more personal evil to attend to, and Aziraphale had just lost a game of dal.

“I don’t know about this.”

The windows were traced with frost, and they glittered. The dawn sunlight had turned Aziraphale’s hair into a halo as bright as a star.

Along with the new light, the dawn had brought Crowley’s downstairs neighbour, slamming a taxi door with a shout, and more shouting in the stairwell when he was confronted with the lift Crowley kept forgetting to fix, and which resisted all human attempts to make it work again (except for Mr and Mrs Basu, the latter of whom used a wheelchair. Aziraphale’s subconscious had only been trying to punish _him_ after all, and on the dreadful day of the fight and the rain and the British Museum it and the lift had come to a swift understanding).

Crowley and Aziraphale had been playing dal all night, and Aziraphale owed him a dare. Dickhead Keith’s post-binge arrival had presented a perfect opportunity, and Crowley would have hated to leave without a properly _demonic_ farewell.

“It’s so easy. Just knock and run.”

“What if it’s someone old, who can’t get to the door?”

“It’s not. It’s a 32-year-old consultant manager who hates me because he wanted the penthouse. Little prick. And you should have seen the Halloween costume he wore last weekend…”

“But what if he’s asleep?”

“I wish – he’s just got in. He’s the one you heard shouting at the taxi driver downstairs.”

“What if he’s… got a young man or lady round?”

“Then we’ve hit the jackpot.”

“I _can’t_, Crowley, it’s _cruel_.”

“It’s not cruel. It’s a bit naughty. If he even answers it, it’s a slight inconvenience for him. And that’s important too, remember. You have to comfort the afflicted, but you’ve got to afflict the comfortable as well. It’s just like the Arrangement. I don’t make the rules.”

“You very much _did_ make the rules, you’re the one who suggested forfeits.”

“Yeah, unlike you, who wanted to use money. Honestly, _gambling_… No. You agreed to Dal-and-Dare. Think of Adam. Think of it as _Just William_ praxis. Or if you’d like your dare to be reading another _Just William_ book instead…”

“Urgh, I hate you.”

“You love me,” said Crowley, and felt as though he’d been struck by lightning when Aziraphale smiled at him. He grinned back. “Go on.”

Aziraphale drew a deep breath, and then rapped on the door with far more force than Crowley had expected. “Go, go, go!” he hissed; Crowley was already down the corridor, holding open the staircase door.

“In, in!” He pulled Aziraphale home just as they heard _Keith’s_ door open.

“Hello? Hellooo?” Aziraphale had both hands pressed over his mouth, and his face was alight with the glee of childish naughtiness. Crowley thought, erroneously, that he had never wanted to kiss him so much in his existence.

Then he thought to check on Aziraphale’s aura, as he did a couple of times every day. Was it his imagination, that it seemed more whole? Lighter?

The door down the corridor clicked shut again, and Aziraphale let out a whistle like a kettle. “It’s so wicked! It’s like – Augustine and the pears!”

“That’s what makes it so fun. Well done, angel. Didn’t know if you had it in you.” He held out his arm, and Aziraphale linked it with his own as they climbed up the staircase.

It was important, he thought. To act as though the worst thing Aziraphale could be cajoled into doing was knocking on some prick’s door. Rather than killing a child. It allowed him to take on the angelic role he found so protective. To fall back on old patterns. Aziraphale found that comforting.

And Crowley liked to feel a bit demonic, sometimes. To know that Aziraphale would still smile at him when he was at his worst.

“At least you didn’t ask me to do something _illegal_.”

“Oh, no, it is,” Crowley said, and laughed at Aziraphale’s expression. “Don’t worry. I’ll look after you.”

He felt the warm wash of _love_ from Aziraphale, even though they weren’t touching. The empathy must be contagious.

He opened a new bottle of wine while Aziraphale sat on the floor and rearranged the dal counters. Crowley carried it through, and handed Aziraphale a glass. “You can go first.”

“How kind. Oh, three.”

Crowley sat down on a cushion, picked up the dice, and then looked up at the shrill ringing of his doorbell. “What the f- at this time in the morning?”

“Annoying, isn’t it?” Aziraphale said, the very picture of glowing innocence. Crowley stuck his tongue out as he walked to the door.

There stood Keith, in his full runny-nosed, blown-pupilled, jittery glory. “You just knock on my door?”

Oh, this day might be even better than Crowley could have hoped. He’d promised Aziraphale forgiveness and kindness and all the affectionate healing a demon could muster, but it had been two months of good behaviour and he would personally feel _so_ much better after a fist-fight. Just to burn the excess anger off. Aziraphale had bubble baths and his manicures, and Crowley had going into alleys with a fancy watch and the latest iPhone. He smiled widely. “No.”

“I know you did.”

“Didn’t.”

“I know it was fucking you!”

“Why would I knock on your door?” Aziraphale was in his flat, with wine and a board-game, his better nature told him. Oh, but…. “What do you have that I could possibly want? A cheaper flat? A high street watch? A _BMW_?”

It was so _easy_ sometimes; the human shifted into what he thought was a fighting stance, and Crowley smirked, and-

And he heard the pad of bare feet along the corridor, and a small voice. “Crowley?”

The pleasure of encroaching violence curdled, and Crowley remembered himself. Right. Safety. Stability. Definitely no fighting, no matter how fun it might be.

He looked back at the human. “It wasn’t me. CCTV’ll prove it. Call the police if you really want to find out who did, because there’s certainly nothing else for them to be doing in the centre of London at the tail end of night shift, though they might be interested in all that coke residue. Bye.”

He slammed the door again and turned to Aziraphale. “I would have enjoyed that.”

Aziraphale smiled at him gratefully. “There’s no need. Especially when it was my fault. Come and play.”

“Fine. Only because we’ve already opened the wine.”

Aziraphale smiled at him. “Thank you.”

“Urgh,” Crowley said. But he reached out and took Aziraphale’s hand as they went back to the board.

Aziraphale played as he always had – rushing to the central rosette, and then parking himself on it for as long as possible. Crowley played aggressively, unseating Aziraphale whenever he could.

“That’s another roll for me, and… off,” Crowley said, replacing one of Aziraphale’s white counters with his black.

“Oh, bother,” Aziraphale said. “It’s going to be tight again. I have four, so I’ll put that counter on the rosette, another roll… Zero. You go. Why do you dislike that fellow downstairs so much?”

Crowley took the emerald dice. “He’s just an arsehole. His entire job is going around businesses telling them to lay off half the workforce and penalise trips to the toilet. And they give him a brilliant salary for making the world a more efficient, more terrible place, and he spends it all on shit like this and alcohol and coke and strippers. Two, so I’ll bring this one home safe.”

“So you can’t tempt him to do anything, because he’s already doing it all anyway,” Aziraphale said. “Unpleasant job, focus on status instead…”

“Oi,” Crowley said, pointing his finger. “It’s nothing like that. He’s just a common-or-garden prick.”

“Maybe he could use a friend,” Aziraphale said. “Maybe if I win your dare will be to do something nice for him.”

“You are such a bastard sometimes. Two.”

“You can invite him for coffee. And two for me, so I think I’ll bring this one safe.”

By the end of the game both Crowley and Aziraphale were on their respective final squares; whoever rolled a 1 first would win.

4\. 2. 2. 3. 2. 0. 2. 2. 3. 2.

“Roll a bastard one!” Crowley shouted at the emeralds, as he got another zero. “Surely this isn’t normal?”

“Odds of getting a one are one in four,” Aziraphale said, after a quick calculation. “So one of us should have got it by now. The four and the zero are one in sixteen.”

“Two?”

“Three in eight. Gimme the dice.”

“How are you so good at maths?” Crowley grumbled. Aziraphale smiled smugly.

  1. 0\. 1.

“Yes!” Aziraphale cried in triumph, and swiped his disk off the board. “Aha!”

Crowley narrowed his eyes in the imitation of a sore loser. In reality he was squinting to sneak a glance at Aziraphale’s aura. It was still a misty grey, but over the last two months the violet-tinted tears had seemed less deep. For just a second he thought he saw a brief flare of light again.

“I’m _not_ inviting him for a coffee. No way, no how. Oh! Oh, oh, I know what’d be hilarious. Please, _please_ dare me to Thunder and Lightning him again. Please.”

“It’s not a dare if you want to do it.”

“Of course it is!” Crowley scoffed. “That’s the whole _point_ of a dare. You don’t dare someone to do something they _don’t want to do_. Otherwise they’ll just not do it, won’t they? No, a good dare’s like a good temptation.”

“_Really_.”

“It is! A dare should be something that they really want, deep down, even if they can’t admit it to themselves. They just don’t have the nerve to do it.” He grinned innocently. “A dare’s _supportive_, if it’s done properly. Takes on some of the responsibility for something _risky _and_ fun.”_

“Right,” Aziraphale said, and made his processing face. “Well. That does cast it in a different light. And if it was something you really didn’t want to do?”

“Wouldn’t do it. Like you – you enjoyed it, didn’t you? Knocking on his door?”

Aziraphale rolled his eyes. “I could imagine some appeal if you didn’t like the poor fellow. You’ve always dared me to break some rule or another, I’ve noticed it before.”

“Of course. In a very supportive fashion,” Crowley said. “Good for your personal development. Pushing boundaries. Testing authority. Gives you a better understanding of humanity. You were just always a bit reluctant.” Understandably, he thought, thinking of the mercilessness of Heaven and the lies of Hell.

“There’s that element of companionship too,” Aziraphale said thoughtfully. “Breaking the rules together.”

“Exactly. Down in the gutter together, less room for judgement. And it’s more _exciting_. Like me and you. Chatting. Drinking. Hanging out when we knew we weren’t supposed to. That was the fun of it, even before we properly got to know each other. It made me think, _oh, okay, here’s someone who could be fun_.”

Aziraphale gave him a smile like sunshine. “You really think I’m fun?”

“I mean, fun to tease. Fun to make fun of.”

“You think I’m fun!”

“Urgh,” Crowley said, rolling his eyes. “Maybe. Occasionally. When you’re drunk.”

“I’m _fun_,” Aziraphale said to himself, and it was disgusting, how sweet he looked, how pleased with himself; the little smile of surprised joy, the stars in his eyes. He was fucking outrageous, Crowley thought helplessly.

“You’re not being fun at the moment – go on, I want my dare!”

“All right, all right,” Aziraphale said, with a tender smile for him. _Urgh_. “I’m glad. What you said. You really wouldn’t worry about saying no, if you didn’t want to do it?”

Ah, Crowley thought. Right. Aziraphale would be feeling a little raw around the questions of pressure and consent at the moment. “Of course I wouldn’t. Not with you, because I trust you. It’s fine.”

“All right. I just wanted to clarify.”

“Delighted to give it. We’ve played dares loads of times, haven’t we? Even though yours are usually rubbish. ‘Buy a Big Issue.’ ‘Give a fiver to charity.’ ‘Eat a mouse.’”

“But you wanted to do that!"

“Not some random mouse that was nibbling your books! I don’t know where it had _been_, it could have had _fleas_ or anything.”

“You wanted to eat it, though. I was supporting you through a dare, like you said,” Aziraphale said smugly. “I saved it for you especially. It was a _free-range_ mouse.”

“Yeah, exactly – I like my food battery-farmed and miserable. It’s like a nice sauce.”

“Liar.”

“It doesn’t matter – gimme my bloody dare, or your next one will be to eat a mouse too, since you think it’s so fun.”

“Oh, fine, fine,” Aziraphale said. He bit his lip.

“Go _on!_ Think of something really good for me.”

“All right. I dare you to kiss me.”

Crowley’s brain stuttered. He smiled, uncomprehending, at Aziraphale. “What?”

Aziraphale was wringing his hands. Anxiety visibly turned to horror. “I dare you to… I mean. If you don’t- No, sorry, I’ll think of-“

Crowley launched himself across the dal board, scattering the counters; Aziraphale gave a sigh of relief onto his lips, and then a laugh into his mouth as he felt Crowley’s astonishment, and his joy, and a desire thousands of years old fulfilled at last, a tree of life bursting into fruit and flowers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Crowley thinks Thunder and Lightning/Knock Down Ginger is all right, though still not on the level of gluing pound coins to the pavement or attaching fivers to fishing line.
> 
> If you want to play the Royal Game of Ur (dal, in this fic) online, there's a nifty site [here!](https://www.yourturnmyturn.com/java/ur/index.php)
> 
> The final line is a reference to Proverbs 13:12, _"Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life,"_, and is also the title of an amazing pre-Arrangement fic by [Daegaer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Daegaer/pseuds/Daegaer). Read [this first](https://archiveofourown.org/works/179936) and then go on to [this one](https://archiveofourown.org/works/179937)!


	21. Chapter 21

Crowley realised well before the end of November that they were going to have to leave London as soon as demonically possible. Suddenly, the entire world was obsessed with Christmas; every shop was playing songs about the _angelic host._ The world had nearly had the angelic host appearing in the sky in August, and they would _not_ have liked it. What did people even think the word ‘host’ meant, anyway? Host as in 'hostile'. People on street corners were singing about a fucking _army _while imagining girls in white dresses.

Even worse, the National Gallery were having an exhibition on the Annunciation –the feast day of the Annunciation was _in March,_ Crowley thought poisonously, it was a whole thing – so everywhere they went, there was Lippi’s Gabriel. He looked more like _Aziraphale_ in all honesty, thanks to one or two indiscretions in Italy during the Renaissance, but it was unmistakably Gabriel, with his lily staff and peacock feather wings. Aziraphale had been nearly catatonic after they saw the first advert on the side of a bus, and after that it was Gabriel everywhere, on Christmas cards and bus-stops and every fucking wall in London, wearing Aziraphale’s gentle, humble expression and a gilded version of his curls.

The newly-regained power of multiplying biscuits vanished as quickly as it had reappeared. Aziraphale blew up the kettle and its replacement in swift succession. The last straw was when Crowley came in to see Aziraphale at the table, with blank eyes and shaking hands, systematically tearing pages out of the Annunciation art book which they’d shown Gabriel.

He had everything sorted within twelve hours. He hired an isolated cottage in the middle of the Highlands, packed the Bentley with books and food and an Imperial shit-ton of booze. He found Aziraphale’s fancy solid silver menorah, and wore padded ski gloves to toss it into a box, along with candles, dreidel, and plenty of fair trade chocolate money. He considered buying some Nestle ones as well, just for the entertainment of triggering an automatic lecture from Aziraphale. Hanukkah would be late this year and nowhere in London was selling proper sufganiyot yet, so he bought some jam doughnuts and powdered sugar. With some oil they’d be all right, he thought, and even if they weren’t, that’s what the alcohol was for.

The next morning he bundled Aziraphale into his camel-hair coat, wrapped a hideous scarf around his neck, and abducted him into the Bentley. “What are we doing?” Aziraphale said, in the horrible dazed tone which had become more common again in the past week, as he looked around as saw the backseat loaded to the rafters. “Where are we going?”

“Scotland. We won’t see another soul until all the Christmas shit is done, then we can do Hogmanay somewhere. Visit a Scotch distillery. Tartan weaving shop or something.”

Tears came to Aziraphale’s eyes, and life with them. Crowley discovered that travelling to Scotland was far more fun when it was bookended with kisses from Aziraphale. And when you could drive up there in a Bentley at 110 miles per hour instead of riding a blessed horse.

*

“I’d never have suggested this if I knew how fucking cold it’d be,” Crowley huffed, the first time the snow fell outside the window. If he was still a decent angel, Aziraphale thought, he could warm every stone of their little hideaway. He’d fill Crowley’s bed with hot water bottles, until he kicked off the duvet instead of shivering under it through the night.

Aziraphale knew he did, no matter how Crowley tried to deny it. Because he read, or pretended to, until Crowley slept. And then he watched. And he thought.

He’d been selfish, coming back, he thought in the darkest hours, when the wind howled and the owls hooted in the trees around the cottage. If it weren’t for him being so _pathetic_ – shouting at the poor old woman selling charity Christmas cards came first to mind – Crowley would be enjoying himself in London, with all the bars and the restaurants and no snow.

But he’d been _happy_, in September and October, even with everything that had happened. Hadn’t he? He’d been learning to be happy again. They’d held hands. They'd begun to look at houses…

Crowley was free from Hell, and for Aziraphale’s sake he’d brought them to a personal Cocytus. He was free from Hell, and now _Aziraphale_ was his ball and chain. Weighing him down. Crowley had been through so, so much – so much fear and loneliness and abandonment, and Aziraphale should be the one protecting _him_.

If Crowley had the choice again, would he have taken up Aziraphale’s dare and kissed him? If he’d known how Aziraphale would backslide and undo all the slow progress he’d made?

Crowley was still shivering, and Aziraphale slid the hot water bottle from out of the bed. Crowley’s feet were like ice. If Aziraphale tried a miracle he’d probably set him on fire, he thought as he shuffled through to the kitchen and turned the kettle on. Fill the bed with holly.

The cottage had been decorated with boughs of holly for Christmas. Aziraphale hadn’t been able to look at them; the sight of them, even glossy and green as they were instead of brittle and brown, made his palms prickle, made stinging pain like a rash spread over his front.

He’d run right out to sit in the car again, ashamed beyond words. Crowley hadn’t known why he’d been so upset, and Aziraphale could barely tell him. He eventually grit out that there had been holly on the ground of Epping Forest, and Crowley vanished every last leaf of it. Aziraphale hadn’t trusted himself to, of course. But he’d ruined the beauty and the happiness of Crowley’s plan, like he seemed to ruin everything these days.

He was an _angel_. He was meant to bring joy to others. Now he sucked it from the room. Now he just made Crowley fret and worry, and after he had hoped for so long…

The kettle clicked off. Aziraphale wiped his eyes with the heel of his palm – another embarrassment, another humiliation, how close he was to tears all the bloo- all the _blasted_ time.

The boiling water hit an air bubble and splashed onto the back of his hand. Aziraphale nearly swore, nearly went to heal it, and then sucked the scald instead. Marvellous. Another badge of honour to show Crowley in the morning. Like a child running to Mother – yes, very romantic, wasn’t it?

Another thing Gabriel had ruined. Not just the memories – all those little acts which Aziraphale had asked for, which Crowley had rolled his eyes at and then performed with as much ostentation as possible…

Aziraphale now asked with a downturned gaze and a tight jaw. Crowley didn’t roll his eyes. He performed whatever miracle Aziraphale needed as quickly and nonchalantly as possible.

He screwed the cap back on the hot water bottle, and tightened it as far as he physically could. Tomorrow, he told himself. They had all this time and isolation, and he would put them to good use. He would get his powers back if it killed him.

But now Crowley was cold, and sliding the hot water bottle back under the duvet to cover his feet could only do so much. Aziraphale pulled off his dressing gown and laid it on top of the blanket and duvet. It might help a little.

Then he unbuttoned his pyjama shirt, dropped it, pulled the duvet back, and slid a leg in. His corporation gave off heat too – he could hug Crowley close, as Crowley had hugged him that day in August, after the rain – that would be warmer, that’s what humans did for warmth-

_What was he doing_? Forcing touch on Crowley, who was asleep and oblivious and would probably not _want_ to touch Aziraphale while he was so agitated and upset, not when he was trying to sleep. It made him think of Gabriel – the helplessness as he felt what Gabriel felt, or just the strange yielding firmness of human skin, the unfamiliar warmth of it sending electricity up his arms and down his spine.

He pulled back, disgusted with himself, but suddenly Crowley had a finger hooked in the pocket of his pyajama trousers, and one yellow-gold eye, glowing just slightly in the dimness, stared up at him.

“Sorry,” Aziraphale croaked. “So sorry.”

“You all right?” Crowley mumbled, still half asleep.

“Tip-top. Just fine. I- I thought if I got in you might be warmer, but I didn’t think of it before you fell asleep, and I- that’s something you have to _ask_ these days, it’s not like the old coaching inns anymore – and you might have woken up and been- been- I shouldn’t have-“

Crowley pushed himself up from the mattress, blinking himself awake. “You want to get in?” he said muzzily.

Aziraphale gave a hopeless, slow wriggle in place of a shrug. “I wanted you to be warm. It’s my fault you’re so cold. It’s- And now I’ve woken you up, I’m so sorry-“

Crowley kicked the duvet away. “Get in, angel.” He held out his arm, and Aziraphale dived in, eyes squeezed shut, and only exhaled when Crowley wrapped himself around him. “Mmm. Warm.”

“A bigger hot water bottle,” Aziraphale said, trying to make light. A hot water bottle filled with hot blood, not water – so much of it, the horrible sensation as it cooled and clotted on his skin-

“No,” Crowley said, and kissed his hair. “None of that. Just sleeping…”

“I can’t. I’m sorry. I knew I shouldn’t- I’ll get out-“

“I can put you to sleep,” Crowley said, opening his eyes again with visible effort. “If you want.”

Aziraphale thought about it – thought about Crowley’s guilt when he had panicked and put him to sleep after Raziel’s visit – and nodded slowly. “Don’t let me dream,” he said. He wrapped his own arm around Crowley, and held him tightly. “Please don’t let me dream.”

“I won’t,” Crowley promised, and already there was a warm, heavy darkness stealing over him. And then there was nothing.

*

Crowley woke up first, even though the sleep he’d placed Aziraphale under was one that he could wake up from on his own.

This was the first time he’d ever woken up with Aziraphale. The first time he’d woken up warm with his warmth, able to look at his face relaxed and barely-lined in sleep, able to touch the few white hairs on his chest, like a patch of lace on his sternum.

He returned his attention to Aziraphale’s face, before contemplating his nipples or anything further down caused the kind of reaction he doubted Aziraphale would much appreciate. Not that looking at his face helped much with that, because Crowley was a moron who was _in love_. It was so pathetic.

Apparently so pathetic that Aziraphale had been moved to take pity on him in the night and provide him with his own angelic stove. Thus this blissful réveil. What was that line from _Tosca_? “With a furtive hand I relieved all misfortunes I encountered.” But then Aziraphale had doubted himself, and the sudden increase in chilly air had woken Crowley, and… and Aziraphale had given a string of stammered apologies for his presumption that Crowley had barely taken in at the time.

Some things never changed. That same instinct to comfort and protect – to give warmth, and without a flaming sword all he could give was himself – and then all that doubt and fear and self-recrimination had come flooding back. How could Aziraphale possibly trust himself to use his powers again (and that’s what Crowley’s own instinct told him was at the root of it) when he couldn’t trust his instincts, his own thoughts, his very perception of reality?

Fuck, he’d been like a lamb led to the slaughter. The rape had just been the last desperate attempt to wrestle back control, with the veil of plausible deniability torn away, but it had all begun long ago. Crowley could have burnt every last angel in Heaven for what they’d done to Aziraphale.

Crowley had known it. It was why he had never pushed, not really. Not as hard as he could have, not as hard as he’d often wanted to. All the way back in Eden, before the archangels took his heads and his wings – even then, Aziraphale had doubted his instinct for compassion._ It’s been bothering_ _me_, he said, mistaking Crowley’s sarcasm for reassurance.

No real sarcasm left in him, now. Not for Aziraphale. _To tear strips off the flesh_, it meant in Greek, originally. To sneer and mock.

No wonder Aziraphale hadn’t realised he was being sarcastic in Eden. From what Crowley had seen, that was how the archangels had spoken to him all the time, and of course _they_ couldn’t do anything wrong. He’d been unable, even then, to distinguish between mockery and reassurance.

Crowley began to think about when Aziraphale had finally learnt the difference. Not in the 1600s, Crowley cheated with impunity then. Maybe towards the end of the century? Probably when he was hanging around with Pope and Swift and that lot. If he hadn’t before, he surely would have when he read their satirical biography of a pedantic scholar with no common sense, raised by a strict and eccentric father on a diet of butter and honey…

Aziraphale was stirring, and Crowley packed all these thoughts away. He only had a little time to stare without awkwardness.

Crowley inched closer again, luxuriating in the angel’s warmth. Aziraphale opened his eyes, and in the sunlight through the lacuna in the curtains they were a crystal-clear green-blue. “Morning…”

“Good morning,” Crowley said, and pulled away just long enough to kiss Aziraphale. “Mmm. So warm. Let’s just stay in here today.”

Aziraphale’s fingers hovered over his hair, and then, thankfully, they were stroking it. It had been growing since Armageddon, and it was now at an awkward, very unfashionable length. “Won’t it be dull?”

“Nope. It’ll be great. _Lovely_,” Crowley said, mimicking Aziraphale. He kept his face very soft, and his eyes open.

Aziraphale hummed a sleepy laugh. “I was going to go out and try miracling.”

“Nah. Cold outside. Stay here.”

“More collateral damage to worry about in here…”

“Don’t need any miracling today. Just need to stay here with you.” Crowley smiled when Aziraphale hesitated, and he placed his hand on Aziraphale’s chest. “Go on. Do it tomorrow. Stay warm today.”

Aziraphale’s fingers were still in Crowley’s hair. “All right,” he whispered.

“Mmm.” Crowley snuggled close again, pleased by yet another successful temptation. “All right.”

*

Aziraphale was the first to break, as he’d expected; Crowley could, after all, literally sleep for decades. He got up at around noon and piled the firewood high, and realised suddenly that he had no idea how to light it. Fire had always been easy.

He pointed a finger at the firewood, and hesitated. What if he blew up the chimney? What if he set the whole cottage ablaze? There was still a red mark on the back of his hand, from the hot water bottle.

He stared at it for a while, and then went to the kitchen. He found a butter knife, and just _relaxed_ – there was a _whoomph_ as it suddenly flamed like a bar of magnesium.

Some things, once you’d learnt how to do them, you never forgot.

He sneaked into the little bedroom to retrieve the dressing gown and held it in front of the fire. After a second, he put the slippers there too. He might not be able to perform any miracles, but he would do what he could to keep Crowley warm. That, he could do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me: All right, you need to wrap it up, come on, you have other fics to write, other shit to do, you're trying everyone's patience
> 
> also me: but what if....... it was cold...... and they had to share a bed..... _~FOR WARMTH~_


	22. Chapter 22

Crowley looked out of the cottage window, wearing Aziraphale’s slippers and the duvet like a cloak, and nursing a mug of coffee that was about sixty percent brandy. He was ready to duck to the side if Aziraphale looked back and spotted him, because there was nothing more likely to make him mess up a miracle than a witness.

It looked like Aziraphale was trying to light a log on fire. Occasionally he’d walk up to it, give it a lecture with a lot of finger-wagging, and then retreat to a safe distance.

Once it had smoked. Once it had exploded. Most of the time it did nothing at all.

Crowley sprayed some more whipped cream into his concoction. It was odd. If Computer Boy had been right, then surely the result should be the same every time, however skewed or non-existent that was? No reason for the log to smoke one attempt and explode the next.

How did he do magic? Mostly without thinking about it. He wanted something to be a certain way, and there it was…

Wanting something and expecting to get it. Was that confidence? Fuck, he sounded like some American psychotherapist. Was confidence innate, or dependent on circumstances?

Aziraphale turned around, and Crowley quickly snaked back to the kitchen. He had his own job to do; he’d decided that he was going to cook. Aziraphale liked food, after all, and God- fuck knew what Christmassy monstrosities they might have to endure if they drove for forty minutes to find a place to eat. So. He was going to cook instead.

Humans had been doing it for years. It’d be fine.

He had the ingredients; potatoes, green beans, salmon. Butter? He went to Youtube on his phone and searched for how to cook salmon (he didn’t know why everyone complained about the bad reception in the Highlands, he had a full bar of 4G).

He stared in panic at the video playing on his phone.

“Grate one lemon to get one teaspoon of lemon zest,” he muttered, and stared around the kitchen. What the fuck did he grate a lemon with? It looked like a flat knife – some kind of saw? Oh, shit, and now the woman was putting the fish in a pan of spitting oil. Right, cooker, he needed to turn the cooker on.

He identified which knob operated which hob, and turned on the one for the biggest. There was a slight hissing sound, but no flame. There’d been flame on hers! He went back to watch the video from the beginning.

Ten minutes later he was on the doorstep. “Aziraphale! Aziraphale, do you know how to get lemon zest?”

Aziraphale looked around and smiled at him. “I think I do – are you cooking, darling?”

Crowley writhed in joyful agony. “Trying to,” he mumbled at the ground as Aziraphale jogged up the hill.

“What are we making- Crowley, my God!” he said, and ran into the cottage.

Crowley followed warily. “What?”

“That smell, that- like rotten eggs-“

“Yeah, maybe one of them broke on the way up. A couple of the hampers were sliding a bit. Oh, the cooker’s not working either,” Crowley said, and reached down to drag some power up from Hell instead-

“No!” Aziraphale shouted. “Don’t move!”

Crowley froze, hand raised, ring finger to thumb.

Aziraphale turned one of the knobs back, and threw the kitchen window open. Crowley was about to protest at the rush of freezing air this brought, but Aziraphale was drawing a deep breath. He held it for a long moment, then exhaled. “Oh, that could have been unpleasant. My dear, show me what you did.”

“Turned that knob there,” Crowley said, pointing. “It made a little hissing sound, but it didn’t turn on.”

“Ahh. You turned the gas on, but you didn’t light it. The whole kitchen was filled – if you’d sparked it the whole place could have blown up.”

Crowley went pale. “What, seriously?”

“I think so. Maybe. Couldn’t you smell it?”

“Bad egg smell? I smelt it for a couple of minutes and then it went away.”

“No, you- Look, see, you turn on the gas. There’s the hiss. Then there should be a book of matches or a lighter or something here – oh, ‘spark button’, that’ll be it.” Aziraphale pressed it, and a ring of blue flames leapt up. “There!”

Crowley crouched down to look at the hob more closely. “That’s amazing. Fuck me, humans are clever bastards. Mad ones, though… How did you know how to do that?”

“Oh, well.” Aziraphale was rummaging for pans in the cupboard under the sink like he was an old hand. “I found myself at a loose end that Christmas you went to America with young Warlock to see his grandparents. I helped at the Christmas dinner the Catholic church around the corner put on, and one of the ladies there showed me how to do the potatoes and the vegetables and things. Can you find us a bottle of white? She thought I was completely useless – some old widower or bachelor – couldn’t even turn on the hob. But the kitchen was full, so I couldn’t use any magic.”

Crowley found the bottle, and watched as Aziraphale chopped some of the bigger new potatoes in half. “Didn’t know you did that kind of thing.”

“Well, no, I didn’t make a habit of it. I suppose I was a little lonely that year.” For a second there was only the _chop-chop-chop_ of the knife. “It had become quite pleasant, hadn’t it? Eating Christmas dinner in the kitchen with the others and young Warlock…”

“Yeah. I mean, I’m not really one for Christmas. Obviously.”

“I like the dinner. And the Chocolate Oranges.”

Crowley grinned as he poured the wine. He had three stashed away in the Bentley. “We get to have Hannukah together this year. Haven’t done that in ages.” He stepped outside for the blessings, but he liked the gambling.

“Of course – oh, if I’d known we’d be away for so long I’d have brought-“

“Your nasty old menorah? Yeah, I bought it with us,” Crowley said, trying not to show how pleased he was when Aziraphale beamed at him in delight and surprise. “When are you going to get some nice modern one? Polished chrome would look great.”

Aziraphale shuddered, and dumped handfuls of green beans into one of the pans. “I _hate_ the modern ones – half of them don’t even have the candles or the lamps in a straight line! I’ve seen branches, zig-zags – I mean, I’m not pedantic about it- don’t laugh, Crowley, it’s important!”

“Yeah, yeah – if anything other than the _shamash_ is an inch out of line, Heaven’ll be furious,” Crowley said without thinking. The water in the pans was beginning to bubble; they could hear it quite clearly in the silence that followed. “Sorry.”

“No, it’s fine.”

“It’s not, that was thoughtless.”

Aziraphale smiled at him. “Yes. You’re so thoughtless that you brought my menorah for me. Give me some wine and set the table.”

Crowley handed him the glass, and let his fingers linger on Aziraphale’s. The oil in the pan was beginning to spit, and Crowley saw a small red mark… “Don’t go out again tonight?” he said, without meaning to. “It’s already dark. We can do something else. Whatever you want.”

Aziraphale looked up at him, and Crowley _hated_ how tired and sad he looked as soon as one of them punctured their careful acting. “Whatever I want?”

“Whatever you want. Fucking _Strictly Come Dancing_ or _Bake-off_ or whatever.”

“Dancing is tempting,” Aziraphale said, as he placed the salmon fillets in the pan. The furious sizzling made Crowley think of a couple of the nastier rooms in Hell. “But, um. You’ve been being so careful with me. I know. I recognise it, and appreciate it, but… Tonight, could we just get really, _really_ drunk?”

Crowley’s heart had been pounding at Aziraphale’s sudden seriousness; he relaxed, and exhaled in a laugh. “Absolutely, angel.”

*

Crowley lay on the sofa, weight on his shoulders, arse on the backrest, legs hooked over the top. His head hung back, and the ends of his hair nearly touched the floor. Aziraphale, upside down and lying on the rug like the Sleeping Hermaphroditus, twirled his fingers in it. “No more.”

“’S more. Wait, wait,” Crowley said, and held out his arm. A new bottle of wine appeared in it.

“Show-off. Sit up to pour it.”

“No, no, I can do it. Hold up yer glass,” Crowley said. He closed one eye, so that he could only see the one glass. “Hold it still!”

“I _am_. You’re just pissed.”

“_Aziraphale!_ Language!”

“Didn’t swear,” Aziraphale said, and raised his head just enough to take a sip. “Mm.”

Crowley realised that drinking from a glass would necessitate moving, so he necked it from the bottle instead. “’S all right. Like, um. The one they used to like in Byzantium.” He let his head fall back again, and stared at Aziraphale. “When was it that you thought. You know. Arrangement?”

Aziaphale opened his eyes again. “Oh, oh. Um. Erm. Almanzor.”

“Almanzor?”

“Yeah, you know. Córdoba.” He took a deep mouthful. “God, I loved Córdoba. The gardens – the food! Grapes and dates and figs and oranges… The poetry. I was, um. What’s the English. Eunuch! Court Eunuch. Got myself sold to Al-Hakam, too old for the harem, helped with the library.”

Crowley tried to parse this. “Why’d matter? Thought you were a eunuch?”

“For the _male_ harem,” Aziraphale said. “He was, you know. He knew Latin.” He managed a wink. “I helped, you know. Got _two_ sons.”

“Wait, like. Miracles?”

“Might as well have been,” Aziraphale said. He finished his glass, and held it out for Crowley to top him up. “No, a jāriya called Subh. Said to her, you know, let’s help him out. Cut all her hair off, helped her dress like a ghulam. Two sons!” Aziraphale held up two fingers, and sighed. “But that library. Hasdai and Lubna and Fatima and me. We made the library the most… Hasdai was too old to be travelling then. Me and Fatima, went all over the Mediterranean. Went to Baghdad. Money no object. Every book we could get. Pagan, Muslim, Christian, Jewish, didn’t matter. Any language. Some just… beautiful. Beautiful.”

Crowley necked from the bottle again, and employed a slight miracle to stop him from choking. “So what’d Almanzor do?”

“Ah, he was. Um. Subh listened to him. Then when the Caliph died… Only one of the sons survived. Eleven. Like Adam, Warlock... Subh gave Almanzor all her money, he got the army. She was meant to be regent, made him hajib and, well. He burnt them. All the books that were ancient, or ‘heretical’. Science, philosophy. We got out whatever we could, smuggled them to Seville or Granada, but… We lost so much. Just like Alexandria.”

Aziraphale shrugged. “After that I thought, you were right. What’s the point? You’d been right about Camelot, that was all recent, and then Córdoba. And then in Byzantium – well, trying to make Basil appreciate learning and gentleness was… As soon as he’d conquered Bulgaria, all he could think about was war with Georgia. He hated peace. _Hated_ it. I was so tired. And-“

Aziraphale struggled to sit up, but the look he gave Crowley was solemn enough that he wriggled into a vaguely more respectable position too. “Thought about going to Heaven, saying I just couldn’t do it anymore. And _they’d_ say, it’s not so bad. You’re over-reacting. Always been too sensitive. And by the time I came back down I’d think, yeah, they’re right. They’re right. But I thought _you_’d say, silly angel. It’s so much _worse_. So. That’s when I went looking for you. Because I realised you really were the only-“ Aziraphale sniffed, and finished his glass. “More wine.”

“Should sober us up,” Crowley said, even as he obeyed.

“No. Just don’t want to feel it. Don’t want to feel it for a night.”

“You will, though. Wheeling round again. Feel it even more.”

“Don’t want to,” Aziraphale said, and downed a mouthful. He swallowed it with visible pain. “Oh, _God_ – ‘nother one, Crowley, please-“

Crowley shook his head, saw stars, and dropped the bottle. He pointed his finger straight at Aziraphale’s forehead, and sobered him up.

Aziraphale groaned and collapsed back. “Bastard.”

“Don’t worry, I’m feeling plenty punished,” said Crowley, as he sobered himself in turn. “Bleugh. Urgh.”

“I didn’t want you to sober me up. I wanted to get drunk.”

“You _were_ drunk,” Crowley said. “We’d got to the messy stage.”

“I wanted the messy stage,” Aziraphale said to the ceiling. “I wanted that. No control.”

That would have sobered him up if the magic hadn't. “What? Why?”

“Because… then it would match. The outside would match the inside. The surface would match the reality.” Aziraphale sighed, and sat up. “I’ll go and do the washing up.”

“No, stay,” Crowley said, holding out his hand. “I’ll do it in the morning. Stay with me.”

“I suppose I can’t say no to that,” Aziraphale said. As though he hadn’t. Twice. He shifted, and leant his back against the sofa, so that his head was close to Crowley’s. Outside the window, the lamplight caught on the sleet outside. “You’ll tell me, won’t you? If you, um. Get tired of looking after me.”

Crowley’s breath caught, and he realised that he had been a fool, a prime moron – they really should have stayed drunk. “I will,” he said carefully. “But I don’t think I’ll need to. I’ve been wanting to look after you for millennia.”

Aziraphale was still staring out of the window. He flinched when Crowley touched his hair, but then leant back against Crowley’s hand. “I shouldn’t need you to. I’m the Guardian. My God-given duty… I’m the soldier, and you’ve- you’ve gone through so much. I should be looking after both of us, and it’s all gone crooked.”

“You do look after me. Always worrying about me,” Crowley tried to reassure him. “Like with the holy water. And with Gabriel.” Aziraphale looked around at him, and Crowley raised his eyebrows. “Yeah. You _did_ look after both of us, and you were hurt, so now it’s my turn. Simple as that. There’s no ranks or roles on our side.”

“How very egalitarian. … Crowley, what if I can never do magic again?” Aziraphale asked softly. “It’s been three months.”

“Oh, three months. Grow up.” His gentle tone belied the words. “Even humans know three months in nothing in the face of this. Or the fucking Apocalypse before it. Fucking… _extraordinary rendition_.”

“No. You’ve not lost yours,” Aziraphale said, looking away again. “It’s something Gabriel did.”

“With your aura?”

“No!” Aziraphale said, exasperated. “The messy aura’s just a symptom. It’s not… He was _in me_. In my _memories_.”

“Memories,” Crowley said, and sat up. “Memories! Fuck, that’s it!”

“What?”

“That’s why your magic keeps going wrong! It’s what the computer boy said. Our power comes from our belief in what we can do, right? I believe that I can create gold, hey presto, here’s some gold. When I was driving the Bentley… I was _imagining_ that she was a working car. That she wasn’t on fire. The second I _stopped_ imagining that she was, well. You saw.”

“But imagination and belief aren’t the same thing,” said Aziraphale, ever the pedant.

“No, but it’s like belief’s the engine and imagination’s the tracks, right? Something like that. But you believe you can do something because you’ve done it before, or you’ve seen someone else do it before. We all saw God creating the universe. Monkey see, monkey do.”

“Please, Crowley, a little propriety!”

“No, that’s what it is! And imagination is just applying that belief to a different situation. I’ve driven the Bentley plenty of times when she _wasn’t _on fire, so I… I held the memory of that, imagined _that_, even though she was. On fire. You and cooking today! Different food, different kitchen, but you cooked it, because you remembered… Whether we’re imagining or believing, it’s all dependent on our memories. What we’ve _learnt_. You and me have been in weirder situations than most angels and demons, but we’ve got a bit more imagination than them. Because we were _also_ watching the humans all this time. So we were able to… make that jump, to new powers. Like you and possession. You made that cognitive _jump_, and then you’re the first angel to possess a human being. Me doing blessings. I’ve seen you do it, I believe it’s possible, and I imagined that I could too.”

“I don’t see what this has to do with my…” Aziraphale visibly looked for a word, and sighed when he couldn’t find an alternative, “impotency.”

“Because if our powers are founded on belief and imagination, both of those things are founded on memories. Imagination is extrapolating from what’s already happened. Belief is just confidence in having seen it happen before, in the sense that we’re using it. But if Gabriel’s been in all your memories, smashing the shit out of them, all your foundations are shot. If you need to perform a miracle, normally your mind would quickly nip into a memory of you having done it before, and then you’re confident that you can do it again.”

“I don’t, though. It’s instinctive.”

“It’s _subconscious_. Different thing.”

“We don’t have subconsciouses.”

“If you think we don’t have subconsciouses,” Crowley said delicately, “why did you ask me last night to make sure you didn’t dream?” Aziraphale’s eyes slowly widened. “Your _subconscious _knew you have one. I dream, sometimes. I definitely have one. When you act _instinctively_, you can do it. Like- like today, in the kitchen! When you sucked in all that gas, from the cooker.”

Aziraphale stared into space. “I did it once. Middle Ages, 1400s…? Chimney had backed up and the whole house was filled with a miasma. Everyone was ill with it. I didn’t even think about that, though.”

“You could heal me when I grazed my hands because you didn’t think; you did it automatically. It’s when you have to think that you get it tangled. Your subconscious still knows that you’re capable of it, so you _are_ capable of it. But now, when your mind looks at a memory, instead there’s… Instead you don’t feel in control. You feel helpless.” Crowley’s chest with tight with the awful words and the fear even a peripheral glance at them caused, but if he was right, then at least they’d _know_. Even if there was no cure, surely knowing would help Aziraphale? “Fuck, it’s all of it. Gabriel’s the unexpected variable. You try to make a glass, you get the bloody rock instead. When you tried to teleport you… you remembered the other time. What he took.”

“My heads, you mean.” Aziraphale shook his last one. “It doesn’t make sense. I didn’t think about Epping when I tried to make a glass, I thought of Rome. I certainly didn’t about- about my _demotion _when I was trying to teleport!”

“Doesn’t matter. _Any_ memory you went to, Gabriel was there. If it had only been one, maybe there’d only be a problem when you tried to do that specific thing? But because it’s everything-“

“Because it’s everything there’s no hope,” Aziraphale said, and Crowley felt his heart drop. “I suppose the only thing I can do now is swap with you. That’s the only thing he’s… Well. Better to know. Better to-“ Aziraphale was looking out of the window again. “Have to learn how to do things the human way.”

“It’s not hopeless, angel. Come on,” Crowley said in desperation. “Take it slow, focus on one thing at a time. Try to remember them without Gabriel? I was there for some of it, I could help you. Jog your memory. It might take a long time, but you can… overwrite them. As Computer Boy would say.”

“Every memory like a computer file,” Aziraphale said slowly. “Overwrite every file the program depends on. I could overwrite them – restore them to the originals.”

He looked up at Crowley. “Or you could.”


	23. Chapter 23

Crowley narrowed his eyes as he tried to work out what Aziraphale had just said. How could _Crowley_ possibly fix Aziraphale’s memories?

Aziraphale, slowly, raised his trembling right hand, palm out.

Crowley had barely thought about it in six thousand years, but the memory came screaming back to him. He’d mostly embraced other angels of his own rank, friends from the construction crew. On one memorable occasion, their managing archangel, which had been a mistake. Crowley hadn’t been able to look him in the eyes once he knew all about he really thought about the crew.

Once he’d ended up in conversation with Jophriel; he’d been asking some questions about how the nebulae’d work, and she’d seemed to enjoy chatting to him so he chanced it, holding up his hand just like Aziraphale was doing now. He’d barely dared to hope that she might _accept_, and she’d blown his fucking brains. “Thanks,” she’d said, at the end, rearranging her crown of braids. “You’re really sweet.”

“How,” Crowley said carefully, “could that _possibly_ help?”

“You said I need to overwrite all the old memories that Gabriel invaded. Try to bring them back to the originals. You were there for so many of them – together we remember what it was really like, share it…”

“No,” Crowley said. “Absolutely not.”

Aziraphale’s hand dropped as though Crowley had burnt it with his words. “I… You dislike it? Mingling?”

“First of all, demons don’t mingle. For obvious reasons. Second, asking me like this is just – It’s like asking a doctor to do a rectal exam with his cock.”

Aziraphale flushed bright red, and looked away in horror. “There’s no need to use that kind of-“

“I think there is, Aziraphale. It’s _weird_.”

Aziraphale flinched, and stood up. “Yes, I see that now. I’m sorry. You don’t want to. I quite understand.”

“No, I don’t want to mingle with you as some… medical examination! I’m not an _angel_,” Crowley snarled. Aziraphale looked at him with such _shock_ and _hurt_, and Crowley suddenly realised that the heat he could feel in his gut was anger.

“I’ll go and do the washing up,” Aziraphale said, and Crowley could hear the mortification in his voice, and _good_, frankly, because Crowley felt just as mortified and it was only fair that Aziraphale should too.

He heard the sound of water hitting the sink in the kitchen, and he could have cleaned up the meal he’d almost ruined last night in an instant. But then there’d be nothing for either of them to do but _talk_, and Aziraphale could have the nerve to look upset as though he hadn’t talked about Crowley’s embrace like it was some human dentist or surgeon prodding around and making gruesome repairs.

_He didn’t say that, though, did he_, a disloyal part of his brain said as he tossed the empty wine bottles into the small living room bin.

He didn’t have to. Maybe Aziraphale was just going around embracing so many fucking angels he could be that clinical and casual about it.

And how likely was that?

Crowley stared out at the rain lashing against the window, then marched through to the kitchen. Aziraphale had created a monstrous amount of bubbles in the sink, and he was wiping his face with a tea-towel. “Who else have you embraced?” Crowley said.

Aziraphale whipped around. “Ex_cuse_ me?”

“I mean, if you’ve lost count-“

Aziraphale turned the tap off, and now he looked furious, which was far better than the tears. “Why are you so angry about this? It was a suggestion, you don’t want to, I won’t ask again.”

“I’ve not embraced anyone in over six thousand years, so for _me_, it’s kind of a big deal,” Crowley said. “If I can even still do it. And you just suggest it like- you know, like the Fall never happened, like we’re both a couple of idiot fledglings who’ve never-“

“I’ve never mingled with anyone,” Aziraphale said icily. “Unless you want to count Gabriel and Raziel?”

Crowley’s jaw dropped. Unfortunately, his anger rallied before his sense did. “That makes it _worse_!”

“How?” Aziraphale threw the tea-towel onto the kitchen table. “_What_ is going on with you?”

“You don’t even _want_ to embrace! It’s something you’d _endure_ just to get your powers back.”

“I wouldn’t be enduring it.”

“You would.”

Aziraphale frowned. “Don’t tell me what I feel, Crowley.”

“Well, I doubt you’d be enjoying it, would you? If you’ve never felt the urge before!”

“Not an _urge_,” Aziraphale said. He picked up the tea-towel again, to wring it. “_Urge_ is the wrong word. I think I wanted to try it, in the Ritz,” he said softly. He sounded very embarrassed. “Not to _make love_ in the Ritz, I mean, that would be... But… I’d always just thought the human kind looked very messy, with all those fluids everywhere and odd faces and pain, I thought, and the angelic kind was so vulnerable. Both so much more trouble than they were worth. But we’d survived, and we were eating together, and I thought for the first time that I could see the appeal. The vulnerability and the messiness wouldn’t be such terrible things, if it was with _you_. I could suddenly see why people would be so eager.”

Crowley gaped at him. “And you tell me this _now_?”

“When else could I have? Gabriel happened, and I thought you’d had enough messiness and vulnerability from me to last a lifetime.”

“Fuck, you can’t stop yourself, can you?” Crowley said. “How many times do I need to say it – _I don’t care_ if you’re strong or stoic or a mental mess or a burden. I don’t care. I want to know what you’re feeling!”

“But every time I try to tell you, you blow up like this!” Aziraphale said. “I try to be matter-of-fact when I talk to you about these things and that just makes you more angry, and I don’t-“ Aziraphale pulled out one of the chairs, and sat at the table, head in his hands. “This is what I was afraid of. Crowley, I don’t know how to speak about all this in a way that doesn’t make people hate me. I don’t what it is I’m doing wrong. I _don’t understand why you’re so upset._”

Guilt was seeping through his anger, twisting his stomach. Crowley gingerly sat down at the table, opposite the angel. “It’s… Aziraphale, it’s not that I don’t. Urgh. That I don’t want to mingle. Embrace. Whatever you want to call it.”

Aziraphale looked up at him in abject confusion. “Then _why this_?”

“Because I don’t want to mingle with you _like this_,” Crowley said. He was in agony.

Aziraphale studied him. “You want to mingle… in another way?”

“For another reason, yes. Maybe. Whatever.”

“What other reason?”

“Because you _want_ to!”

“Crowley, I do want to. Now. I just asked you.”

“No, I mean, because you. Because there’s some _emotion_ behind it! Because you thought of it like a human being instead of some robot!”

Aziraphale bit his lip. “Crowley, that was hurtful.”

“Yeah, well, it’s hurtful to be finally asked to have sex just because your brain is broken!”

“I told you. I’d thought about it before. When we were finally free.” Aziraphale’s mouth was twisting. “I don’t know what more you want of me.”

“The way you asked – what made you ask… Like it was a medical procedure. Overwriting files,” Crowley said. The guilt of making Aziraphale look like that was like a thorn-briar around his heart – which was _ridiculous_, because Aziraphale was the one in the wrong here.

“How else ought I to treat it? As an expression of trust? A way to know you better?”

“Something that you want to do for its own sake. Because you think I’m- I can’t have this conversation.”

“Because I think you’re what? Beautiful? Kind? Brave? Funny? I think all those things of you! I have for centuries! There’s no one else in existence that I’ve ever even considered mingling with. Or human sex – I’ve been able to appreciate good looking men like anyone else, but I’ve never… The _risk_, apart from anything, but their youth, their lack of understanding… It would never have been worth the pain or the uncertainty. The fear. Only you’d be worth it. Only you. I don’t know what more you _want of me_.”

“You don’t _need_ it.”

“No. If you wanted to do it I would, because you wanted it. I’ve heard it’s very pleasurable.”

“Oh, for-“ Crowley looked up at the ceiling and dragged his fingers down his cheeks. He felt ridiculous. “The way you talk about it is just… For fuck’s sake. Or not! Shit!”

The strength underpinning Aziraphale’s relatively stoic expression was visibly crumbling. “I can’t change the way I speak. I wish I could, but I can’t. Crowley… I don’t _need_ to eat. I don’t _need_ to drink. You don’t _need_ to sleep. We do those things because we enjoy them. Because they make existence richer. I know that you don’t enjoy food like I do – all the little rituals and presentations and combinations – but we still go out to restaurants, don’t we?”

Crowley looked at him, and felt lacerated by how hopeful Aziraphale looked. “… I watch you. I like seeing you enjoying it.”

“And I think I’d like that!” Aziraphale said. “Seeing you enjoying it. Knowing that I was giving pleasure to you.”

Those words bypassed his brain entirely, and suddenly his treacherous cock was extremely interested in the discussions. His mind might not be fully persuaded, or his heart even half, but one particularly untrustworthy idiot part of him was completely convinced. And Aziraphale’s open, tired face was doing swift work on his heart too.

“I can’t explain it,” Crowley said, and he _could_, the words were there, but he had offered his heart to Aziraphale on a silver platter, and Aziraphale had dashed it to the ground again and again.

“Try.”

“There needs to be _feeling_ behind it. It’s meant to be, you know. An expression of…”

“Crowley, I _don’t understand. _I might not have done it myself, but the other angels never seemed to treat it like it was so important. And humans – humans will embrace someone they’ve just met! There are other ways to be close to someone. Deeper ways.”

Crowley pressed his fingers to his eyelids until he saw a rainbow of stars. “Angels were casual about it before because they didn’t have any secrets! And it’s different for humans, it’s about pleasure as much as…”

“It’s about breeding for most creatures.”

“_Breeding_, Aziraphale, for fuck’s sake.”

“What’s wrong with the word ‘breeding’?”

“Same thing as what’s wrong with this whole conversation. Fundamentally we just have completely different ideas about this, obviously.” He looked across the table in misery. “I’ve wanted to do this with you for thousands of years, and now you’ve suggested it and it’s not… It’s not how I thought it would be.”

Aziraphale looked so woe-begone. “That’s not my fault.”

“No. It’s mine. For being an idiotic romantic.”

Aziraphale blinked at him. “A romantic?”

“Yes, Satan’s sake. How much more explicit do I have to be? Once, yeah. It would’ve been enough. Just to _fuck_. But now it- It would hurt too much. To have sex with you and not have it mean… For the reason behind it not to be…”

Aziraphale’s face softened quite fatally. “You mean… to mingle as an expression of love.”

Crowley bared his teeth and looked up at the ceiling. “Ngh. Umh. Maybe.”

“Crowley… I’d die for you. I walked into Hell for you. I gave _everything_ to Gabriel for you. The intimacy, the visibility, the _knowledge_ – even before Gabriel, I’ve been terrified of it. Asking this of you… I don’t understand how I could express my love if all that didn’t.”

“You could, _er_, I dunno. _Say_ it?”

Aziraphale had the audacity to blink in surprise. “If you need to hear it, my darling: I love you.”

Crowley surged up to his feet. “It doesn’t matter now. It doesn’t count if I had to prompt you!”

“Of course it does. Oh, dear. I thought that my feelings were obvious?”

“Maybe I’d have just liked some confirmation? I’m always the one reassuring you, but about this- You witter on about love all the live-long day, but since we’ve been- been- been _holding hands_, you’ve never _said_ it.”

“That’s different. That’s professional love. This is… personal. Personal love.”

Crowley rolled his eyes. “See? You can still barely say it!”

“No,” Aziraphale agreed. “I can’t. I thought that… I’ve always lied. To you. About you. Saying that we weren’t friends, that I didn't like you, that I didn’t know you. I thought that my words weren’t much use anymore. That you could never trust them. That no one could. I told you, every time I talk I just seem to upset people. You. I thought I had to show you by my actions instead, but I- I’ve obviously failed in that.”

Crowley had crossed his arms, and he stared down at the angel. “Then, um. Hm. Then you do?”

“_Yes_.” Aziraphale’s voice cracked. “I _love _you. I love you more than food or wine. I love you more than music. I love you more than my books! If I could only save you or every last one of them, I’d choose you. I love you more than Heaven, and as idolatrous as it is, I worry that I love you more than God. And I know it because we could sit on the roof of the ark for days with nothing but water around us, on that ark that _stank _however many miracles I performed, and as horrible as it was it was so soon after Semazai and Raziel and all the rest, and as angry as you were… it was still a good memory for me.”

Crowley had sunk back onto his chair. His eyes were huge, and entirely gold. “The _ark?_”

Aziraphale nodded. “Because we talked, and played dal. And sang. You were so funny. Doing your impressions of Noah and Shem and everyone. I laughed more in those few weeks than I had in all the time before it. But then you went off, and I didn’t see you for years, and I worried that it was because I was the only company there rather than… I was so excited to see you in Rome. It was like the sun had come out. But I didn’t _realise _I loved you until you dropped that bomb on St. Dunstan’s. That I was _in love_ with you. That it wasn’t just agape, it wasn’t even just philia, it was both and eros thrown in and all the rest of it too.”

Aziraphale was staring out of the window. The sleet continued, and the only sign that the sun was coming up was that the looming sky was growing a lighter shade of grey. “I thought you knew, but I’ve let you down again. I’m sorry.”

“No,” Crowley said, and held out his hand. Aziraphale took it, and they both felt the warm flush and the raw, vulnerable depth beneath it. Crowley was surprised that the pain of the hurt in Aziraphale was a match for his own. “I could feel it from you. Especially when we started doing this. I didn’t admit it to myself either, until- well. Until the fire in the bookshop. Suddenly I realised, and there wasn’t any point going to Alpha Centuri. It was already over for me. I just… I thought… you know. You and words. I thought that if you hadn’t _said it_… I suppose you’re not the only one who doubts your perception of things sometimes.”

“I suppose not,” Aziraphale said, with a damp smile. He turned Crowley’s hand over, and kissed it.

There was the spread of forgiveness and hope across his skin, and fuck, maybe Aziraphale had been right. They fucked up when they spoke. But this… Maybe this was a method of communication that they wouldn’t mess up so egregiously. And maybe he was right, that both of them had been so battered and beaten by the years that for them it was only something they could do on a solid foundation of trust.

“I’ll think about it,” he said, and rubbed the back of Aziraphale’s hand with his thumb. “I’m sorry. I was hurt and I lashed out. I was a prick.”

Aziraphale nodded. “Yes, but… But if you thought it was about me using you, like Raziel, then I can understand.”

“No, I know you’d not. That it wasn’t like that."

"I didn't realise it was something you were sensitive about. I'd have said it differently if I'd known."

"It was me building up this… It’s so funny. You’d never think it, but you’re the more unconventional one when it comes down to it."

“Take that back!” Aziraphale said in mock outrage, and that felt safer, more familiar.

“No, it’s true. You march to your own tune.” Crowley smiled. “Throwing off the shackles of society’s expectations. You’ll dye your hair soon. Get an eyebrow piercing. _Sex is just sex, man, free love_.”

“I’m going to finish the washing up,” Aziraphale said, but when he stood up Crowley rose with him.

“Afraid I can’t let go of your hand just yet,” Crowley said. He couldn’t risk a proper kiss, after the unkind words he’d thrown, but he hugged Aziraphale instead. “I’m sorry, angel.”

“Me too.” Crowley felt Aziraphale’s sigh, warm against his neck. “I love you.”

“Love you too.”


	24. Chapter 24

They had wordlessly agreed that a little solitude would do them both a world of good. Aziraphale claimed the bathroom and started to run a bath; Crowley had claimed he fancied a drive and intended to find the nearest shop that could sell them some more wine.

“And you’ve got the thermos flasks?”

“Yes, my dear, just there. And I’ve carved the Shaddai on the upper side of the lintel of the front door.”

“What about the windows?”

“Well, if it really comes to that, that’s what the flasks are for. Stop fussing. If there’s any shortbread..."

“When in Scotland – all right, I’ll keep an eye out.” He paused for a second. “You all right?”

“Just fine, my dear, just fine.”

Crowley nodded, and flicked his finger through the bathroom door. “That’ll keep it hot.”

Aziraphale smiled, and gave him a brief, chaste kiss on the lips. “Thank you, darling. Go on – drive safe.”

He thought he did rather well at keeping a grip on himself until the Bentley roared away. The water was pleasantly scalding, and he’d brought his book through with him. Anything to distract him from how wrong-footed and guilty and alone he felt.

_… and there will be a darkness always and no other colour and the lights will be stifled away and the noises of my mind strangled among the thick soft plumes which deaden all my thoughts in a shroud of numberless feathers for they have been there so long and so long in the cold hollow throat of the Tower…_

Aziraphale sighed and tossed the book onto the bathroom counter with little of his usual care. He let his hands fall into the water, gathered it up, and pressed the wet heat to his face. Then he sank completely under the surface, and a wave of ruby-red warmth flowed over his face.

He didn’t need to breathe, but he’d fallen into the habit over his time on Earth. Reminding his brain that he didn’t need to kept his brain occupied for a few more minutes. Prevented him from thinking about how he’d humiliated himself.

For a second he’d been so hopeful: the thought of facing everything he had to face in his head with Crowley not at his side, but far closer than that – within and without, mingled in every way. The headiness of that trust: to know that Crowley trusted him so much, and to give him all the affection and reassurance and love he’d been too terrified to. To trust in turn that whatever Crowley saw in him, he wouldn’t leave. To move to ever more perfect knowledge and understanding; to move through it; to move beyond it. And for the movement itself to have pleasure and joy…

But no. Everything had come out wrong, and he’d insulted Crowley, and now it was a thought that had to be put aside. Another precious thing which he’d ruined. Better that he should just keep his mouth shut. He thought of Crowley, bringing his fingers and thumb together to suggest silence.

He remembered Gabriel, doing the same. _Maybe you should just keep your mouth shut_.

He forgot himself, and the automatic inhalation brought blood-hot water into his nose, his mouth. He sat up and coughed, sending water sloshing over the gunwale of the bathtub. Blood beat a tattoo at his temples, and the water felt cold.

Instinct forced him up and out, and sense brought him down to sit on the floor and pull a heated towel from the radiator. How embarrassing it would be, to faint and dash his brains out, or drown in a bathtub; he at least admitted the possibility to himself, now, after the months of horrible physical vulnerability. How terrible, for Crowley to find a corpse again.

He waited for the dizziness to fade, for all the strange bodily symptoms he had no words for to recede. The heat of the water had aggravated yesterday’s scald, and it was bright red against his bright pink skin.

As good a place as any to start. If Crowley wouldn’t help him, he’d have to do it himself. Pick one memory, and look at it head-on. Not flinch and run. Watch where it went, and follow it through.

He held his hand over the patch, and the memory came to him. He’d been talking about it during the night, after all. Basil’s Bulgarian campaign, and a child burnt with Greek fire: the skin on her little chest had blistered, plasma pouring out of it, the edges of the wound black and rose-pink.

There was a feeling of coolness on his own hand, but then the images were torn, the child’s body stamped down on – that hadn’t happened – and the memory of Gabriel’s overwhelming force and power brought him right back to the forest and the mulch and the holly. All of his own terror and horror came flooding back.

No. That memory wasn’t worth it.

But meeting Crowley for the first time, on the walls of Eden…

That was a memory worth fighting for. Aziraphale got up, and dressed like he was arming himself for battle. He had survived a thousand other things alone. Things he couldn’t heal: losses and disillusionments and all those dark disasters. Battles and brimstone. He’d been alone for six thousand years, abandoned on this confusing planet, and he’d never been able to expect _Crowley back soon_ before.

He got into the bed, hand down on Crowley’s pillow, and he remembered.

*

After half an hour Crowley found a small shop in Glenfinnan, where he was at least able to buy some wine and some shortbread. He also found some Empire biscuits; Aziraphale always brought packets back whenever he went to Edinburgh, he complained that you couldn’t find them in England. They’d make a good make-up present.

With this in mind, Crowley drove back to the cottage at a hundred miles an hour, and then kept right on driving.

When he drove – when he drove _fast_, when he really pushed the Bentley and himself - he felt a paradoxical dreamy clarity. For as long as it lasted, he moved smoothly through existence. It was a bit like meditation, he thought, if he’d ever done meditation: the world shrank down to the road and the car and him, all in perfect harmony, and all other thought just fell away. He was in complete control.

He stopped when the road just ended, right by the sea. It was a thick, opaque grey, scudded all over with white horses charging.

It made perfect sense, in the cold light of reason, after the shock and disappointment faded, why Aziraphale would think of mingling as a tool. He’d only ever been embraced as a means to an end. Like enduring a fucking knife. Gabriel had stabbed him, Raziel had gone in with a scalpel, and he’d been asking Crowley to wield it as… what? A needle, stitching him back together?

His head was pounding. Every time he thought he couldn’t hate Heaven more, he realised some horrifying new depth to their bullshit. Some exciting new way that they’d fucked up Aziraphale.

On top of that, they’d only really been talking about angelic sex. What about human? How had Aziraphale described it…? _Fluids everywhere and odd faces and pain_. Right, well, marvellous.

He should have been more understanding. He’d known that Aziraphale was talking out of desperation, out of unbearable pain. He should have realised they were talking at cross purposes, and been temperate, and…

And then they’d not have spoken about it again, for a few decades at least. And that small grain of doubt would worry away at his sub-conscious. Maybe this had been better. Lance it quickly.

_I love you more than my books. I worry that I love you more than God._

Aziraphale hadn’t Fallen, so Crowley suspected he and God remained on an equal level, at least. He couldn’t blame Aziraphale for that. Crowley still loved Her, even though he hated Her too.

What was Aziraphale meant to do, if Crowley wouldn’t help him? How did you cleanse a mind of archangelic damage? He wasn’t clever enough for this; he could find the Achilles’ heel in a system, in an ideology, in a mind. He was good at destruction. He wasn’t a builder anymore. He only knew how to break things, not to fix them.

He looked out over the sea. That wasn’t quite true, though. Aziraphale had asked Crowley to repair his beloved old coat. Bloody _Hamlet. _When he was with Aziraphale he became something more. Something better than what Hell had made him.

And Aziraphale had said that Crowley made him laugh. That was something, right?

He still didn’t know how to fix Aziraphale – or, with embracing off the table for the moment, how to help him to fix himself. But something would occur to him. Crowley was an optimist.

He stopped at a pub on the way back to the cottage, and paid a handsome amount for two plate-loads of roast beef. No visible damage to the cottage, no lingering ethereal or occult presence, but he was relieved when he called to Aziraphale that he was back, and Aziraphale answered from the bedroom.

He walked through, and Aziraphale sat up slowly in the bed. He was pale, save for red-ringed eyes; Crowley went straight to him. “Are you all right? What happened?”

“Nothing. Nothing. Just tired. Thinking things through.” Aziraphale gave him such a sad smile. “I’m sorry, for this morning.”

“It’s fine. Me too.”

“No, I- It was wrong of me to suggest it.”

“And I was hardly a paragon of kindness and patience, was I? I understand where it came from, angel. Unforgivable together, remember?” Crowley said, and was surprised by the feeling with which Aziraphale kissed him.

He shouldn’t have been. _I love you more than food or wine. I love you more than music._ Crowley wouldn’t make him choose; he’d show Aziraphale that he could have food and wine and music, and Crowley too. And all his old books. Everything that made him Aziraphale. “Haven’t even told you I found Empire biscuits yet,” he said in between kisses.

“Empire biscuits?” Aziraphale said as he broke away. “I haven’t had those in… Must have been since the last time I went to the Festival.”

“Before Warlock. Before we had to work all summer,” Crowley said, with a final kiss. “Now we can just do a tour of festivals every summer. Proms, Edinburgh, Hay-on-Wye, Glyndebourne."

"Blenheim," Aziraphale conceded, and Crowley grinned.

"Blenheim. Are you sure you’re okay?”

Aziraphale nodded, and pushed himself up stiffly. “I’ve been trying to… Well. To access files which Gabriel ruined, to use our computer metaphor. It always just turns into the forest, so I’m… Hm. I’m trying just to accept the memory. Watch it. Become used to it. But it’s difficult.”

“Yeah, I wonder why!” Crowley said. “Aziraphale… I mean. I know what you’re trying to do, but that sounds fucking awful.”

“Not that I condone the language, but, yes, it’s not precisely pleasant,” Aziraphale said. Crowley followed him through to their little living room. “I have to, though. I can barely open the window; the smell of all the leaves and _nature_, just makes me think of…”

“Maybe that’s a better idea, then.” Crowley caught at Aziraphale’s hand. “We can go for a walk. And then if it does make you remember it, I’ll be there. I can tell you it’s not the same. It’s fucking Scotland in December, because I’m an idiot.”

“Rather than Essex in August, because I am,” Aziraphale said, with a wry quirk of his mouth.

Crowley snorted, and enfolded him in a hug. He wondered if he would ever stop being amazed by Aziraphale. “You said it, not me. Still pretty early in the day. We could do a lap of the loch, then back here for a late lunch. I bought a couple of roasts from a pub on the way back, they’ll stay warm.”

Aziraphale fetched his satchel with the thermoses from the bathroom, then fussed as though they were making for the North Pole, wrapping Crowley up in a scarf and hat and gloves. Crowley happily let him. The owners of the cottage had left two hiking staffs hanging by leather thongs from the hooks by the door; Aziraphale took one down, and Crowley raised his eyebrows. “I hope you’re not expecting to need that. Lazy stroll around the loch, I said.”

“We could climb a _little_. Just to have a nice view. Besides, they have little thistles carved in at the top, look.”

“Urgh.”

Obviously they ended up climbing halfway up the massive fuckoff munro. “It’s not a munro, Crowley, stop being such a child,” Aziraphale said as they waited for Crowley to catch his breath. “It’s at least five hundred feet off being a munro – closer to a thousand. We’ll go up to that little ledge there and then we’ll go down, I promise.”

“That ledge is not going to give you a better view of the fucking lake than you’ve got here,” Crowley said, and loudly groaned when Aziraphale started hiking up anyway.

“You can use the staff, if you want,” the angel offered, and Crowley sneered at him.

“_You can use the staff, if you want_. Look at me, I’m clever Aziraphale, using a tacky walking stick and feeling smug about it,” he said, and Aziraphale laughed.

Aziraphale helped him up the steep bit before the ledge. “There. Isn’t that beautiful?”

Crowley looked down at the silver lake, ruffled here and there by breezes gusting down from the mountain, and the hundred shades of green all around it. “Yes. In fact, it looks exactly as beautiful as it did down there.”

“It’s good exercise.”

“Urgh.”

“We ought to get some in, before we start on the wine again.” Aziraphale was looking out. “That occurred to me, actually. I didn’t get any of those… The ripping, the psychic tearing, you know. Last night, when I was talking about Córdoba.”

This new information caught Crowley’s attention. “You think some memories are undamaged?”

“Possibly. Or perhaps when I’m in my cups, it doesn’t-“

“Nah, I’m going to cut you off right there, angel,” Crowley said. “Nothing good down that path. I promise.”

“You could at least let me try the path for myself,” Aziraphale said, and sighed. “You’re probably right. Not the healthiest long-term solution.”

“No. We'll find something that works, I promise.”

“I know. I’ll try another memory tomorrow. Try to salvage something from my ruins.” He tried to look cheerful, and Crowley knew it was for his sake. “Maybe I could write my memoirs. Though then I’d have to worry about whether I accidentally included something God had classified.”

“You can’t censor yourself like that. Give the people the truth!”

“I don’t intend to give the people anything! Might as well just have something from it if I torture myself and it still doesn’t make me work properly again. I’ll write it in Linear A, or whatever we used in Elam, or Indus. I don’t think the humans have deciphered them yet. I’ll have to check about Linear A.”

“If you want to ensure no human ever reads it, you should self-publish it on Amazon.” Crowley beamed when Aziraphale laughed again.

Then lightning struck the rock behind them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The passage Aziraphale reads in the bath is from _Titus Groan_ by Mervyn Peake; it's the reverie of a character descending into madness after his beloved library is burnt down. Generally Aziraphale's more of a Prunesquallor than a Sepulchrave, except when it comes to literature; I think Crowley wishes he was a Steerpike, but has an awful lot of Fuschia in him.
> 
> As for the festivals, the Proms is Classical music in London, Edinburgh is mostly theatre and comedy, Hay-on-Wye is a small town in Wales famous for its book festival, and Glyndebourne is opera. Blenheim Palace does lots of fancy car shows in the summer that Crowley probably loves to bring the Bentley to - helps him to hit his envy quota every summer quarter.


	25. Chapter 25

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so, so much for all your lovely comments! I'm so sorry I haven't been replying; I thought you would probably prefer the next chapter instead of my witterings, however heartfelt and grateful those witterings were. I'll try to reply to some today and tomorrow, though I unfortunately have to catch up with the work I've been procrastinating on; otherwise I'll reply on Saturday evening and Sunday!

Gabriel looked different. It was subtle, but instantly noticeable. His hair was as neat as it always was. Perhaps it was his eyes, Aziraphale thought, in a moment that stretched nightmarishly. They were larger than usual. Stretched wide. There was a new glitter to them.

No. It was his suit and tie. They were in his favoured colours of grey and lilac, but this suit wasn’t perfectly tailored. It was too wide at the shoulders, slightly too tight at the waist; it caused a fold at the button. Sleeves and trouser legs half an inch too long.

This suit was conjured. This Gabriel had come straight down from Heaven to find them.

He had the element of surprise: in his second’s head-start his left arm swept out, dragging Crowley to the side, away from Aziraphale. Crowley made a sound of fury more like a shriek than a hiss, but Gabriel’s fingers curled, and Aziraphale knew he was frozen in place.

Aziraphale saw with clear eyes and a heavy heart what he had to do. He began to walk towards Gabriel, and tossed his hiking staff aside. Gabriel raised an eyebrow in surprise.

“I wondered when you’d come back down,” Aziraphale said. He needed to get close enough that Gabriel couldn’t see him reach for the flask in his satchel. He’d left it unbuckled, and his mind raced; he could flick the cup off with his thumb, he was sure, and begin unscrewing it. As soon as any air got into it, it would explode.

He raised his chin, and picked up speed. He put one hand in his pocket, and the other in the satchel. “I understand now, Gabriel. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it.”

“Aziraphale!” Crowley shouted; Aziraphale didn’t look at him. He might lose his nerve if he looked at him.

“I’m so sorry, my dear,” he said, closing the gap. The cup flicked off into the bag, and his thumb rested on the ridged cap. He knew he had the right flask; it jerked in excitement into his palm, trying to reach him to burn his angelflesh even through the thermos.

Gabriel reached out his right hand, and gripped Aziraphale’s throat. His fingers dug into the soft flesh beneath his jaw, just as they had in Epping Forest. “Do you really think I’m that stupid, Aziraphale?”

“Worth a shot,” Aziraphale croaked. He brought his right hand out of his pocket automatically, in an attempt to ease Gabriel’s grasp; with the left, he brought the holy water flask out of the satchel, and let it drop.

Gabriel’s eyes followed the bouncing flask. Close to, they were lit from within with fury.

“You’re looking better than the last time I saw you. Still, wouldn’t be hard.” Gabriel nodded towards Crowley. “Bet you enjoyed him patching you up too, didn’t you?”

And Aziraphale, all at once, understood.

Crowley hadn’t healed him in the forest. Aziraphale had insisted that he not. He had been embarrassed and ashamed beyond words, and the thought of the additional humiliation of Crowley _seeing_, _knowing_, mentally stitching his fundament back together, probing with his power to find all the internal bleeding, removing every broken holly thorn from his front, from his penis and his soft abdomen and palms. Crowley noticing that his left arm hadn’t been dislocated, unlike his right; wondering whether Crowley was wondering if he could have fought harder.

And _he had healed himself_.

The botched miracles hadn’t started after the rape. That meant the semantic error, the incompatible variable – it was nothing to do with what Gabriel had done to his memories at all.

When had it begun? What was the first miracle that had gone wrong?

“Have to take the rough with the smooth,” he gasped.

“Very drole. Very glib. Not like last time.”

“Yes – given last time, I’m surprised Raphael let you out so soon. And you didn’t even take the time to…”

The suit didn’t fit. But Aziraphale’s clothes did. They fit perfectly, even more comfortably than his old physical ones had. He’d grown used to the different shades of the material now. Crowley’s eyesight wasn’t the best, after all, even when he wasn’t wearing sunglasses.

He remembered Crowley shyly passing them around the bathroom door, in the bookshop. He remembered his own obliterating shock, the shattering realisation that Crowley knew him enough to conjure his clothes from nothing. When Crowley had rescued his books at St. Dunstan’s, Aziraphale had realised he loved Crowley; when Crowley made those clothes, he realised _just how deeply_ Crowley loved him in return. And his guilt, and his grief, and all those emotions had been too much for his tattered, wounded essence; he had fainted, and when he’d woken up…

Gabriel wasn’t the cause of the semantic error. It was nothing to do with Gabriel. The incompatible variable that had broken him, that had destroyed his understanding of himself, was the certain knowledge that he was loved.

His jaw dropped. The botched miracles flashed through his mind. All the things in him which made Crowley’s love incomprehensible. His demotion: indignity, disgrace – weeping, pleading, begging. The stone: his capacity for ruthlessness, for pure instinctive brutality. The violence he’d been created for. The pouring rain that had followed him was the flood: his silence, his complicity, his moral cowardice.

All those other little things – a lightbulb exploding, scratching music records instead of ringing bells, wine into stout. All his little incompetancies and deceits and stubbornness and denial. He’d destroyed a record instead of ringing the shop bell after letting Crowley sleep for four days to avoid seeing Anathema. Crowley had said that Aziraphale never ignored Crowley’s dares when they were important, and they’d both known it was a lie.

He’d been able to heal Crowley’s hands. He’d been able to turn on the kettle from the next room, to make coffee for Crowley.

He brought the hellfire flask out of the satchel.

“No!” Crowley was struggling against Gabriel’s grip on him; his nose was bleeding from the effort. “Aziraphale, _no_!”

Gabriel looked down at the flask between them. His eyes were wide, and he raised his eyebrows in acknowledgement. “Right. A second one. Well, I knew it was a risk.”

Gabriel was scared, and trying to hide it. He’d known hellfire was a risk, and had taken it anyway. His ego hadn’t allowed him anything less. Perhaps word had got out in Heaven and Gabriel couldn’t take the blow to his reputation; perhaps the aftermath of Raziel…

No matter. It wouldn’t matter in a few seconds. He and Crowley had fought about kamikaze runs, on that rainy day in August.

He knew Crowley was thinking about it too. In the perfect clarity his last few moments were giving him, he could hear Crowley’s desperate struggle against the air, his unconscious snarls and hisses. “Aziraphale! You can’t!”

“Go on,” Gabriel said softly. “You’re immune, aren’t you, Aziraphale? Why are you hesitating?”

One last chance. One chance of a future with Crowley. “I don’t want to kill you. Go back.”

“Still trying to play the merciful one? Still trying to pretend your weakness is a virtue? No.” Gabriel’s grin was ghastly. “You’re going to have to kill me.”

Aziraphale unscrewed the cap with his thumb another half an inch. The flask began to shake in his hand; he could feel something _alive_ in there, something powerful and angry. The first molecule of air, and it would blow, taking him and Gabriel with it.

And leaving Crowley completely, irrevocably alone.

“Aziraphale, no! Don’t!” As foolish as it was, Aziraphale couldn’t help but look; Crowley was straining against Gabriel’s hold, eyes completely gold. “You _can’t,_ please-“

Aziraphale had never felt, ever, that there might be a happy ending for them. But Crowley had showed him happiness. Even though it would end, the happiness of the present was important too. It was worth the risk.

He remembered their fight, and he remembered his own thoughts at the very worst of the rape, while Gabriel destroyed everything he held dear. Everything could be redeemable, if he was alive. If he and Crowley were alive.

Aziraphale tightened the cap, and tossed the flask away.

Gabriel grinned. “I knew it. You fucking coward.” He punched him, hard, in the abdomen, and hoisted Aziraphale off the ground by the neck as though he weighed nothing, so Aziraphale couldn’t even bend to relieve the pain.

The self-sacrificial option was out. Aziraphale doubted, for a moment, that he’d done the right thing, but then he looked at Crowley, and saw the naked gratitude and relief on his beloved face, and knew. And he knew as well that Crowley could see everything written plain on his face too.

It reminded Aziraphale of how he’d lost control at Jasmine Cottage. How all it had taken for Crowley to understand what he needed was the pawing of his hoof.

And then Gabriel’s hand was not gripping his throat, finger and thumb digging painfully into his jaw. It was stretched uselessly across his muscled ox’s neck. Aziraphale swung his head to the left, aiming to gore Gabriel’s head with his right horn.

He’d always been embarrassed by his ox’s head. It had always the most open, the quickest to betray his emotions. Usually this meant that it betrayed his anxiety by lowing or looking away in a panic. Embarrassing among the other angels. But it had also been the humblest, the one happiest to gaze up at God in adoration. And for sudden strength, you couldn’t choose better than an ox.

Gabriel ducked, and Aziraphale felt his horn tear through skin like paper, but not bone. Gabriel put his hand to his head to heal it, and Aziraphale slammed everything he could of his two thousand pound weight into the archangel.

He heard Crowley give a shout as he was freed, and Gabriel clenched his left fist tight to capture him again. In his right appeared a flaming sword.

Gabriel’s plan was made clear. Instead of trying to find some new technology to wield against them, he was relying on the traditional. Angel, demon, or human – a flaming sword would discorporate either of them easily, and would leave their essences with some permanent souvenirs of the event.

Aziraphale knew enough about bullfights to know that he no longer had the advantage; he resumed his human form, and groped on the ground for the cottage’s walking stick. Gabriel brought the sword down, aiming for his head, and Aziraphale managed to knock it aside. He staggered to his feet, nearly tripping backwards over a rock.

Gabriel grinned at him. “A stick’s not going to do much against a flaming sword, Aziraphale. Even you should know that.”

“Worked against War,” Aziraphale replied, broadening his stance. He hoped Gabriel hadn’t used his sword on anyone other than huddling, screaming humans in the last couple of millennia. He’d carried a quarterstaff in the Middle Ages, when he tended to wander around the place as a priest or a monk. Gabriel only had full use of one hand, while Aziraphale had two, and he hadn’t been able to heal the wound on the side of his head. He was having to blink blood out of his left eye.

They still weren’t very good odds. Aziraphale could defend himself decently with a stave, but against a flaming sword he didn’t trust it beyond three or four blocks. And this wasn’t even a proper quarterstaff – this was half the length and width, with no metal rings to catch and nock a blade with. Gabriel had the advantages of height, reach, and strength. Aziraphale had to protect Crowley as well as himself.

And he was terrified. His palms were slick with fear, his knees were weak, his chest was tight. His heart was hammering against his sternum. The face of his nightmares was in front of him, and the sword’s flames of blue and purple were mirrored in Gabriel’s violet eyes.

Apparently all that was mirrored in his own was his terror, because Gabriel smiled before he lunged. Aziraphale knocked the first stab aside, and stepped back. Gabriel feinted, and Aziraphale dodged rather than blocked, trying to preserve his weapon. Out of his peripheral vision he saw dots of gold-vermilion on the staff where he’d parried.

His best hope was to tempt Gabriel into an overhead blow – something overwhelming, crushing, devastating, all very Gabriel’s style – and block it before the staff was too compromised by the fire. So he widened his stance again, brought his centre low, and prayed that Gabriel mistook it for cowering.

He did.

Aziraphale blocked well, hands shoulder-width apart, forearms hard as iron. The sword bit into the wood of the staff, and Aziraphale dropped backwards. It had been too much to hope for that Gabriel would stick with his sword, but he followed it for an instant, staggered to the right, and the sword was wrenched from his grip.

Changing his grip would take too long. Aziraphale pushed his right hand down, brought his left up, and swung the hilt and pommel of the sword at Gabriel’s head, aiming for the wound his horn had made.

It didn’t hit hard, wobbling half-lodged as it was in the walking stick. But to a head wound, it didn’t have to.

Crowley was free. He transformed into his snake form, small and dark, to give him a few extra seconds while Gabriel tried to spot him in the long grass through the blood and the pain of his head-wound. He was going for the thermos, Aziraphale knew, and he suspected Crowley would stop time when Aziraphale was far enough away not to be caught with Gabriel in the released hellfire, and attack then. The best thing he could do now was flee.

Instead, he panicked. He froze. He was struck, as by another blow to the solar plexus, by the fear that Gabriel would go for Crowley instead of Aziraphale, and by the instinct to _protect_ instead of trust.

Crowley resumed his human form, and snatched up the thermos flask. Gabriel turned to Crowley, so Aziraphale ducked forward and grabbed the flaming sword. That brought Gabriel’s attention back to him; the ledge was too narrow for the hellfire to take out one angel and not the other. And Gabriel knew, now, that Aziraphale was _not_ immune to hellfire.

He cut a quick figure of eight with the sword to get used to the weight and reach, and glanced over his shoulder. His heel was at the very edge of the ledge; there was a rocky drop of a few metres, a few crags, and then a clear, smooth roll down to the trees at the edge of the loch. More than enough height for a gliding take-off.

Everyone knew that aerial engagement with an archangel was suicidal.

He brought his wings out, tearing Crowley’s gifted clothes to shreds, and opened them. Gabriel, blood-stained and wild-eyed, did the same.

Aziraphale thought quickly. Two wings to Gabriel’s six, but he remembered his own flight as a cherub. He’d usually used only two, and kept the other two tucked around him for comfort and clothing. You could fly with only two, and flying with four made you faster, but initially clumsy. Trying to coordinate four limbs took longer than trying to coordinate half that number, after all.

Gabriel, he knew, would fly with all six. But he had no idea how much distance Crowley would need between them, to ensure his safety. If he could lure Gabriel over the centre of the loch…

Behind Gabriel, Crowley had ripped the cap off the thermos; there was a brief blaze, but Aziraphale watched him cup his hand around the opening of the flask and _drink_ the contents, face tight in pain. Right.

“You know,” he said to Gabriel, “I was thinking about writing to the _Celestial Observer_. Telling them about all of this. Not just your crimes, but… well, how you were bested. Twice. By a _Principality_.”

Gabriel roared and lunged for him. Aziraphale stepped backwards off the ledge, and fell.


	26. Chapter 26

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry for the terrible delay on this, and on a literal cliff-hanger too! And of course for the delay in replying to your lovely comments!
> 
> I thought I'd publish this chapter over the weekend, but on Friday I went back to the religious institution in which I used to live to see a friend, and it was quickly made very clear that my companion and I weren't welcome, my friend said maybe it was best if I just left, many tears were shed, I spent the next few days sleeping twelve hours a day - the usual! But obviously it touched on a few issues that made writing this particular fic difficult, lmao. Still, it's all grist for the _Good Omens_ fanfic mill! Hopefully the next and final chapter will be up by the end of the week!

Crowley held the hellfire in his throat and lungs. It felt like eating needles and shards of glass; it was like swallowing pure hatred and pure rage.

Luckily, he’d had plenty of practice in swallowing his hatred and rage over the last three months.

He remembered the night – the long, awful, horrific night – when Aziraphale had been so sick with guilt and self-loathing, as though what Gabriel had done to him that morning was something he deserved, something he’d brought on himself. _“I’m a fool. So stupid. I'm a liar, and a terrible child of God, and a terrible friend. And now I'm a murderer,”_ he’d said.

And Crowley had countered with that line from Tosca: _Oh, hands meant for the fair works of piety, caressing children, gathering roses, for prayers when others meet misfortune... Then it was in you, made strong by love, that justice placed her sacred weapons? You dealt out death, victorious hands, oh, sweet hands pure and gentle._

Gentle, urgh, Crowley had had to gentle him through the whole night, humming Puccini wherever he felt the horror and shame and self-disgust rising to drown Aziraphale. And once Aziraphale had finally slept, Crowley had made a quiet and solemn promise to himself.

It had been, he thought, an impossible promise.

Aziraphale spread his wings and stepped off the ledge.

Gabriel charged over the edge and leapt out into the air.

Crowley followed him.

Once Gabriel started flapping in earnest Crowley would never be able to catch up, but Gabriel wasn’t flying at all. He was gliding, looking from left to right over the great silver space of the loch.

Aziraphale had vanished.

Crowley realised in an instant where Aziraphale was; he had dropped, and Gabriel and Crowley had shot right over him. He didn’t sacrifice speed to confirm this. The sight of Gabriel’s face when he looked over his shoulder told him all that he needed to know.

Crowley grinned. The crazy, clever bastard would still be rolling down the blessed hill.

Gabriel had slowed to a hover to find Aziraphale, and Crowley pulled his wings back and dove. He slammed into Gabriel, wrapped his arms around his torso, and spun them around to get to Gabriel’s front – clinging to his back would be a swift ticket to discorporation-by-wing.

But, if he was honest with himself, he also wanted to look the fucker in the eyes.

He clung to the archangel and wrapped his legs around his hips. Gabriel tried to push him off – first in fury, stunned fury, and then in fear. They were a tearing, flapping, messy tangle of limbs and wings above the shining loch – _so many wings, Gabriel, so many!_ Crowley thought savagely.

Sometimes, Crowley delighted in cruelty. Partially out of habit, and partially because it was funny. That’s when he needed Aziraphale: to look disappointed when he tried to drown a duck, to tut when he laughed at a child who’d dropped his ice-cream, to tell him off for giving a UTI to the women who’d taken the last pastry he wanted. To remind him that he was better than that. That he could be better. That he had a reason to be better.

The cruelty in his heart in this moment, though, it was the edge of love. It was a love honed over millennia. Crowley remembered his own Fall, yes; he remembered Gabriel’s stern look as they’d all clawed at the clouds, screaming and begging, trying to find purchase.

But he remembered Aziraphale and the dark, stiff bloodstains on his robe after his demotion; he remembered the bright crimson bloodstains blooming on the robe he’d conjured for Aziraphale in the forest. He remembered Aziraphale’s desperate grief as the Apocalypse loomed closer, thinking that if he just made it through over Gabriel’s head then perhaps… He remembered that Aziraphale would have died alone if it had been up to Gabriel. Alone but for hostile stares and mockery. _Shut your stupid mouth and die already_.

It wasn’t just about what Gabriel had done to Aziraphale’s body and essence. There were a hundred thousand cruelties which Gabriel had subjected Aziraphale to, from the little abuses to monstrous violations.

He doubted that Gabriel would remember any of them as they grappled, but it was all fuel for the hellfire in him. He ought to have finished it immediately, but Crowley allowed himself just a few seconds to savour his revenge. His kept promise. Gabriel’s hand was around his throat now, and Crowley just smiled, lips pressed tight.

He waited just long enough for Gabriel’s fear to turn to understanding, comprehending terror.

Crowley laughed.

There wasn’t much screaming. Gabriel _did_ scream, loudly, but the hellfire that raged through his essence burnt too quickly for it to last long.

The hellfire had never eaten so well, and it had waited with growing impatience. It writhed over him and around him and through him, ran to end of every single feather of those six wings, drunk on archangelic power. _Yes, yes, yes, you hate him, you _hate_ him, he’s so full of hatred and anger and pride._

Crowley felt the heat of the rage and loathing, and he closed his eyes to luxuriate in it. The hellfire ate Gabriel’s face, stretching his screaming mouth until the void was all that remained. Crowley beat his wings above the loch, wreathed in flames like a red star, as the Archangel Gabriel burnt away to nothing.

Crowley finally looked back to see where Aziraphale had got to. He was easy to spot, with his bright wings akimbo, like a drift of snow on the hillside halfway between the ledge they’d been on and the shore.

Crowley flew back up, pausing only to dive across the surface of the loch to wash the last bits of ash and hellfire from his hands. The cold water of the loch was like a knife against his singing nerve-ends; it was the only sensation to puncture the protective, invincible thrill of adrenaline.

Aziraphale looked terrible. His right wing was clearly broken, as was his left arm and his femur. He’d landed on at least one rock face-first. But the _joy_ and _relief_ that radiated from him was palpable. He was healing his leg; Crowley landed and was immediately stretching out his hand to heal the arm.

“Did you see-“

“Just flew right over-“

“Stupid blessed bloody idiot-“

“You were marvellous-“

“You! With the fucking stick!”

Aziraphale laughed, then hissed as Crowley pressed against his forehead. “Ow!”

“It’s your own fault, you crazy bastard,” Crowley said, and fixed one of Aziraphale’s teeth back in. “That wing’s nasty.”

“Hurts like the dickens all of a sudden,” Aziraphale said, but he was _beaming_ at Crowley. Arm fixed, he reached up to cradle his cheek. “You were… I don’t have the words.”

“Ineffable, then,” Crowley said, grinning back down at him. He dropped down, careful of the broken wing, and Aziraphale’s kiss tasted of blood. “You were incredible. Incredible.”

Aziraphale’s fingers were fisted in the hair at the back of his head, holding him close. “I couldn’t do it to you,” he whispered. “I couldn’t leave you alone.”

“No, no, no, never leave me alone,” Crowley confirmed, and kissed him again. “Never. Never leave me.”

“Never. Not. Not a suicidal maniac,” Aziraphale said.

Crowley nodded desperately. He was shaking, suddenly; his arm gave out, and he dropped down beside Aziraphale. The grass and stones of the munroe-side were wet and freezing cold, but they were _solid_, he was on the _ground_, he wasn’t _airborne_, airborne and grappling with a fucking archangel. “Always said. Only a suicidal maniac would- would- aerial engagement. I think I’m gonna be sick.”

Aziraphale placed a hand on his abdomen, and the nausea disappeared as quickly as it had appeared. “Neither of us. Both of us. Both maniacs, neither suicidal.”

“Yep. Accurate. Good summary.” Crowley gripped Aziraphale’s hand so tightly he felt the bones shift. “You can heal. You changed.”

“Worked it out. The semantic error. I think I can- or if I _don’t think_, I can, more likely. Oh, God, my head hurts. Crowley?”

“I’m here.” Crowley hugged Aziraphale’s arm tight to his chest. The clouds above them were spinning aggressively. “Fuck.”

“We need to get in. The Host will know. Feel the absence of him.” Crowley saw Aziraphale press his free hand to his chest. “I can feel it. The death of him.”

Crowley took this in. Demons were cut off from the Host and from each other, but he could still _sense_ the momentous events of Hell. A holdover of too many pieces of chilly information dumped into his brain, perhaps. What it would be like to have felt Ligur’s death while _still connected…_ didn’t bear thinking about.

He was silent for too long. Aziraphale had been still and silent too, and that never bode well. “We killed him.”

“No!” Crowley sat up with a groan he could feel vibrating in his sternum. “Nope. _I _killed him.”

“We murdered him.”

“I murdered him. I promised myself that I was going to murder him and I did it. I fucking killed him.” He propped himself on his elbow, and it barely held his weight. Aziraphale’s eyes were glazed over with tears, and Crowley shook his head. “Nope. You don’t get any credit at all.”

“Oh,” Aziraphale said, and touched Crowley’s cheek again as the tears overflowed.

“You hear me? No credit. No guilt. You told him to fuck off, and he didn’t. So _I_ killed him. Not you. You didn’t kill him.” Crowley shifted again, and placed his left hand on Aziraphale’s chest, over his heart. “Come on. Need to heal your wing. Need to get in. Then you need to send a message to Michael.”

Aziraphale was nodding at least. “I’ll say that we told him to leave and we wouldn’t hurt him. To explain the delay, if they check Earth surveillance.”

“Has the added benefit of being the truth. You did offer that.” Crowley helped Aziraphale sit up, and focused on the wing. “Hold still.”

Aziraphale swore a lot, with a given Aziraphalean definition of swearing: lots of “cripes” and “ow”, and even a “zounds” in there as the bone straightened. “Oh, that hurt.”

“Teach you to be more careful of your wings,” Crowley retorted. He was too tired to even contemplate walking down. But he could see their cottage, so with a final push of energy he carried them down with a snap of his fingers.

*

Crowley had collapsed on the sofa. They’d have to fix the wreckage later, but Aziraphale had a task first. He sat at the small table, stretching out his healed wing: the new flesh was stiff, the new skin was tight, but it was infinitely preferable to messing around with a splint.

He reached up to pull the power down from Heaven, nerves like a knot in his throat, and there on the table was paper, and quill, and ink.

Aziraphale had written a lot of painful letters over the span on his existence, but none quite as difficult as this.

_Dear Michael_, he wrote. He tore the paper to shreds. He created a new sheet; he didn’t trust his magic entirely yet, and the last thing he wanted to do was to create a mystical palimpsest.

_Michael_, he wrote, and the brusqueness of it was physically painful to him. _Gabriel is dead._ _I have no doubt that you know this already, but in light of your closeness I thought that you deserved the courtesy of confirmation. I offered him a chance to leave us in peace, as you will see in the Earth Surveillance Files, and he responded by attacking us. _

  
  
_We defended ourselves as was our right according to Articles of Neutrality sealed with the sigils of Uriel, Raziel, and yourself. Furthermore, in accordance with the aforementioned Articles, we recognise Gabriel’s actions as those of a rogue agent, and plan no retaliation against any angel or celestial emissary. What you tell the Host I leave to your discretion._

The quill hovered over the piece of paper. The word _regret_ was there, cramped in his hand, but he couldn’t write it.

_I will not write of regret,_ he decided_, but I am sorrowful that it all came to this. Go with God. Aziraphale._

He rustled his wings in a long shudder and folded the sheet before he lost his final tatters of courage. He borrowed the _shamash_ from the menorah to seal it – it was the helper, after all, it wouldn’t mind helping with something else – and pressed his signet ring into the wax. He addressed it to Michael with a shaking hand.

He walked to the end of the cottage path, tucking his wings away, so that if Michael responded with a lightning bolt it wouldn’t catch Crowley as well. He tossed the letter up towards the grey sky, and watched it rise until it disappeared.

The reply arrived sooner than he expected. It couldn’t have taken more than five minutes, and it was a good thing he’d stepped out of the cottage, because the reply would have punched a significant hole in the roof at the very least. A meteor in the dull Scottish afternoon, and one which didn’t cause any casualties only because Aziraphale slowed it so dramatically.

He wiped the sweat from his forehead, and peered over into the two-metre wide crater. The red-hot reply was cooling with small _pinging_ sounds, and the heat was a physical strike to his face.

It was a gauntlet. Very like the one he’d worn in Camelot, really. Greek letters were still glowing white-hot across the wrist-guard: ΑΧΡΙΚΑΙΡΟΥ. _Until the proper time_.

He sighed. Leaving the gauntlet to cool, he walked back up the path to the cottage.

Crowley was still dozing, sprawled on the sofa. Aziraphale wanted nothing more in that moment than to join him, but instead he took the armchair and settled into it. To keep vigil. Crowley deserved sleep, after the day that they had had. The argument of that morning felt like a thousand years ago…

He could finally confront the thought. Gabriel was dead. Gabriel had existed for longer than the universe, and now he was gone. Aziraphale could feel the absence of him, and he felt as though all his feelings about the matter had fallen into the void Gabriel had left. Like a black hole.

The only thing that remained was relief. As he sat in the silence it built like a wave. He watched Crowley, softly snoring, and his whole being trembled at the force of that understanding: he was alive, and Crowley was alive, and Gabriel was dead. He’d never have to see him again. Never have to hear him, never have to endure his presence.

_And the sight of the glory of the Lord was like a consuming fire on top of the mountain in the eyes of the children of Israel…_But hellfire was something different. Was it blasphemous, to think of something that rose from Hell as cleansing? Saving?

No, he thought as he looked at Crowley. And if it was, then he would gladly blaspheme again.


	27. Chapter 27

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't believe it's the final chapter! Thank you so, _so_ much to you all for reading and commenting and coming with me on this odd journey! So many of you have been so kind and so generous with your thoughts and feelings, and it's been incredibly humbling. Thank you all so much!
> 
> Normally I don't have a beta (as you all know from my typos), but for this chapter I had help and advice and reassurance from @purplefringe and @proskynesis - thank you! <3
> 
> We jump forward about three weeks in this one, to the first night of Hanukkah! Aziraphale follows the Sephardic tradition for the most part, like lightning the shamash after the first light instead of before, but he makes room for some Ashkenazi traditions as well. ;D
> 
> This is my first sex scene, so please find mercy in your hearts and be gentle! XD

“Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the universe, who has granted us life, sustained us, and enabled us to reach this occasion,” Aziraphale recited in Hebrew as he lit the oil lamp and then the _shamash_.

How many times in the last few months had he thought he would never see another Hanukkah? Blessed be Adam too, then, and his friends, and Anathema and Newt and Madame Tracy. And Crowley. _Thanks be to all of them for enabling us to reach this occasion._

Crowley, who was hiding from the blessings in the bathroom. Aziraphale recited the Haneirot Halalu as quickly as he could, thinking that if God minded that then She could come down and discuss it with them.

But he stumbled over the words of the psalm: he _had_ gone down into the Pit, and yet come back alive… “When You hid Your face, I was dismayed,” he said, and the Hebrew cracked in his throat. Nearly there. “To You, Lord, I called; to the Lord I cried for mercy: What is gained if I am silenced? If I go down into the Pit?”

He couldn’t keep Crowley waiting, but the two small flames split into four. He hadn’t Fallen, he hadn’t died, and neither had Crowley. The joy and the relief outweighed the pain, but _Lord,_ the pain was still there. He thought that it might always be there.

But this was not a night for pain: this was a night for joy and laughter, so he swiped his eyes, swallowed, and looked up. “You have turned my mourning into dancing; You have taken off my sackcloth and clothed me with joy, so that my soul may praise You and not be silent. O Lord my God, I will give thanks to You for ever.”

The darkness was very forgiving; in the flickering red light his clothes looked exactly the same as the old ones which Gabriel had vanished. The sackcloth was gone, and Crowley had clothed him with joy.

He went through the bedroom and knocked on the bathroom door. “Crowley? I think it should be safe now.”

“Thanks,” Crowley said. He was looking very proud of himself. “Guess what I’ve got.”

“Crowley,” Aziraphale chided, already smiling, “if it’s that _German_ tradition- Oh, fine!” He took the bag of chocolate money that Crowley was dangling in front of him. “Are we playing then?”

“Of course we’re playing! I’ll let you have one coin before I start winning them off you. Because I’m such a nice demon.”

“You are an absolutely lovely demon,” Aziraphale agreed, getting into the netting with a small miracle. He’d been practicing over the last three weeks, since his epiphany above the loch, and was now relatively confident in the more quotidian matters.

Once Aziraphale had won most of Crowley’s coins from him, and the oil lamp and the _shamash_ had been blown out, he bowed to Crowley’s desire to experiment with a jam doughnut and a frying pan. Both declared it a resounding failure. Then it was time for a bottle of wine to commiserate, and to toast the ruined doughnuts as they were funeraled into the bin.

“We should be able to find somewhere with a deep fat fryer in _Scotland_ of all places,” Crowley said as they finished the bottle. “They deep-fry _Mars bars_ here.”

“They don’t. That’s a lie.”

“Swear to- Swear on- I promise. Absolutely true. It’s a whole thing.”

“Absolutely barbaric,” Aziraphale said. “Do we have any Mars bars?”

“No – _but_ if you wait a couple of days, I’ve got you a Terry’s Chocolate Orange.”

“Oh, Crowley!” Aziraphale said with a smile. “Oh, thank you.”

“We can deep-fry that instead.”

Aziraphale thought about it for a second. “No, no, not worth the risk.” He looked along the sofa at Crowley. Crowley’s long legs were laid in his lap, and he looked relaxed and happy. Beautiful.

“You’re glowing,” Crowley said, returning his gaze. He held up a coin. “Chocolate quid for your thoughts?”

Aziraphale took the coin. “Very high offer…”

“Want to know what’s making you look so happy,” Crowley said, and Aziraphale’s heart soared.

“Tonight. This. You, mostly.” Aziraphale smiled. “I feel like we’ve swapped mourning for dancing.”

“Our styles are pretty incompatible if all you know is the gavotte.”

“You could learn.”

“Or we could both learn something else,” Crowley said. “You know.” He held out his arms and shifted in a vague imitation of ballroom dancing.

Aziraphale’s face hurt from beaming. “_Really_? That would be just- That would be divine.”

“Nope. It would be very human, and a pleasure,” Crowley said as he took Aziraphale’s hand, and then kissed it.

Aziraphale’s face felt hot. It was a good thing he was sitting down, or he feared his knees would have buckled. Crowley must have felt something from him, because he raised an eyebrow, in that infuriatingly arch way of his.

“If you, um. It’s not quite dancing,” Aziraphale said slowly. His mouth was suddenly very dry. “Not mingling. I know that you don’t… You didn’t like that idea. But. Oh, cripes, this is coming out all wrong.”

“Go on,” Crowley said, in a voice that sent a chill up Aziraphale’s spine. He felt like a rabbit caught in the stare of a snake. Everything about Crowley’s stillness screamed _danger_.

But when it came down to brass tacks, Aziraphale had always had a hidden reserve of courage. “Do you want to embrace like humans do instead?”

“You mean.”

“Yes.”

Crowley raked his hand through his hair. “_Fuck_.”

“Well, if you want to be vulgar about it-“

“No, I mean- Pjrgh. Krh. Do you only want to do this because I want to?”

“No,” Aziraphale said honestly. “I… just want us. I want to be close to you. I want you in however…” The reserve was failing him. He made to pull his hand back, and Crowley’s grip tightened on it.

“It might be horrible.”

“I know.”

“You might hate it.”

“I know.”

“It might make you think of him.”

The corners of Aziraphale’s eyes prickled. “I _know_. My dear, it’s fine, I’m sorry-“

“No,” Crowley said. “All right.” His hand twitched towards where his sunglasses would be hanging from his jacket pocket, and with visible effort he laid it on his knee instead.

Always trying to be the cool one, Aziraphale thought with aching affection. His heart was thrumming like the rabbit’s in his chest. He was vibrating with it. He felt as though Crowley could shatter him with a word. With a glance.

“Fuck, we should be drunk for this,” Crowley said instead. “Probably a bad idea, but… So, um. Tell me what kind of thing you were thinking of.”

“Um. _Well_. I mean, you know, I’ve seen a lot of vases,” Aziraphale said with a significant look. “I just… I’d like to be close to you. As close as possible. And I want to see you.”

“Okay.” Crowley’s Adam’s apple bobbed in his long throat. “That’s. Yeah. That’s possible. I mean, if I remember the vases you’re talking about. I’m sure you’ve seen stuff other than vases. Read?”

“For the first time, though,” Aziraphale said. “I don’t think I could… I think if I was on my front, it would remind me too much of… I want to see you. I want to _see_ that it’s _you_.”

“Of course, yes, I mean. I wasn’t thinking that for your first time it’d be- I mean, given…” Crowley gestured helplessly.

“Yes. I don’t want to think of that,” Aziraphale said, looking away.

“Aziraphale, we _don’t have to_. It'd be fine to just carry on gambling and get drunk. Try frying some more doughnuts.”

“No, I want to do _this_,” Aziraphale said firmly. “I’ve been thinking about what it’d be like to make love to you and I want to _try_ at least.” He looked anxiously at Crowley, remembering their awful argument the first time he’d brought this up. “If _you_ want to?”

“Fuck. Yes. Yes, I want to,” Crowley gritted out, looking very much like he _didn’t. _Aziraphale nodded, and managed a smile, and looked down at the carpet. Crowley squeezed his hand. “I want to. Just… nervous.”

“Nervous?” Aziraphale said. “But you’ve done it so many times! Everything you told me about Venice – like the time with the two women and the man and you made all three of them-“

“So, yes, some of those stories might not have been exactly 100% the complete and unvarnished truth,” Crowley said quickly. “Some of them might have been exaggerated. A little. For dramatic effect.”

“Crowley!” Aziraphale cried. “What about- what about Caligula? When he gave you that golden laurel crown for your performance at the orgy you tempted them all into having!”

“The orgy was already over by the time I arrived, that’s why I was so blessedly grumpy when you showed up.” Crowley looked as miserable as he had in Rome. “I have _done it_, just… Just not for a while. And nothing of what I _have_ done matters compares to you. To the thought of being with you.”

He looked so miserable that Aziraphale took pity on him and tried to pole-vault his own shock. “I’m rather relieved, actually,” he said. “That you’re not some… _lothario_.” This did what he had hoped it would: make Crowley boggle at his vocabulary and work out how best to mock it. “We can muddle through together instead. That sounds much less scary.”

“Oh, yes, very demonic,” Crowley said. “Very Casanova.”

“I wasn’t too fussed about Casanova,” said Aziraphale. “It’s you that I fancy.” One of them was going to have to be brave, and Crowley was too kind. How could God have been so cruel as to riddle them both with such anxiety? He gave Crowley a long kiss, and smiled. “Now, my dear, um, correct me if I’m wrong, but I think we’ll need some olive oil – I’ll check in the kitchen-“

“Olive oil?” Crowley was smiling happily at him again. “You really are stuck in Athens, aren’t you? Don’t worry, I can do far better than olive oil.” His smile widened into a grin. “Unless… You fancy olive oil as a tribute to the season?”

Aziraphale’s jaw dropped, in relief as much as in shock. They could play their own parts to carry themselves over the gulf. “Crowley!”

“I know you’re a traditionalist, has to be oil only – we can save the candlewax for another time-“

“_Crowley_!”

“_It’s a Hanukkah miracle_! Lord, thank you for making this oil last for eight days-“

“You are _wicked_. Blasphemous, facetious- You are utterly incorrigible – and I _really_ wouldn’t go calling on the Almighty unless you want Her to turn up and join in the proceedings!”

“Yeah, no,” Crowley said, still laughing, and returned Aziraphale’s kiss. “Definitely not. Go on, tell me off some more.”

“Is that what discombobulates you?”

“It’s _embarrassing_ how much I love you.” He was herding Aziraphale into the bedroom, undoing his waistcoat. “Tell me how naughty I am.”

“Very well – you’re incorrigible, and I adore you for it,” Aziraphale said, kissing Crowley’s cheek, then his ear. “You always make me laugh. I laugh so much with you.”

“Angel, please,” Crowley said, sincerity cracking his voice. Aziraphale shrugged off his waistcoat and draped it over the dresser. “Now you’re just being a tease.”

“Unlike some of us, I take care of my clothes,” Aziraphale said. He began to unbutton his shirt.

“Just vanish them, I’ll make them again!” Crowley said. He pressed a sharp kiss to Aziraphale’s jaw.

“Oh, no. I _love_ these.” Aziraphale unfastened his trousers. “I’ve not been allowed to manifest clothing since I was demoted – you remember my secondary wings... And these fit so perfectly. Soft and warm: the clothes you made for me…” The ones that had shattered his brain, he thought, and kissed Crowley’s temple. “It’s rather sentimental – I’ve been thinking of it as being clothed in your wings instead…”

“_Holy fuck_,” Crowley said, and desperately pulled Aziraphale down onto the bed.

“Language, honestly!”

“Never buy clothes again. I swear to God if you buy so much as a stitch I’ll-“ Crowley said, kissing down Aziraphale’s chest to pull Aziraphale’s trousers and pants off. He threw them to the side, and vanished his own clothes with an impatient wave of his hand. “Mine. My wings. I’ll make everything.”

Their sudden nakedness was overwhelming. “Whatever you like,” Aziraphale said, melting with the bliss of being able to press his lips to Crowley’s dark-flame hair, to smell the laurel-scent of his own soap. “Oh!”

“Oh,” Crowley echoed, looking down. His eyes were huge, and completely honey-gold, Aziraphale noticed, heart bursting with pride and fondness, before he looked himself. It was all right – he favoured a Classical aesthetic himself, which Crowley apparently did _not_.

Aziraphale was impressed, and allowed his admiration to rise in his voice and his skin. “So beautiful…”

“You are,” Crowley said, and Aziraphale laughed at his misunderstanding.

“No, _you_, silly,” Aziraphale said. Crowley’s grin was so shy and so surprised he had to kiss it again, kiss every millimetre of that shining smile. Crowley’s penis touched his own as they kissed, and it sent a bolt of lightning up Aziraphale’s spine and down the backs of his legs, from somewhere behind and between his hips. It made his body jerk involuntarily; it longed to be closer, just like he did.

Aziraphale’s penis felt swollen and tight and tender; Crowley travelled back down his body, marking his way with kisses like breadcrumbs, and pressed his lips to its head. Aziraphale gasped. It was almost painful – no, it _was_ painful, it was just that the pain was shot through with pleasure.

Crowley looked up in concern. “Too much?” he asked, and Aziraphale nodded, reaching down for him. Crowley slithered up the length of his body. “Too fast. Got it. What do you need? Tell me.”

“Kiss me?” Aziraphale said, and Crowley made a despairing noise in the back of his throat. They wound around each other, as serpent-like as Aziraphale’s form would allow. Crowley miracled something onto his hand, something which felt slippery and _messy_, that word Aziraphale always applied to human sex, but it was suddenly quite fascinating too: the way it felt on his inner thighs, the way Crowley brushed it up his shaft in a slow glide. He was glad that _one_ of them seemed to know what they were doing, he thought, and made Crowley laugh when he voiced it.

“Been imagining for a while,” Crowley murmured in his ear, voice deep and low. “Knees in.”

It was a pleasure to obey, as obedience hadn’t been for millennia. Such a comfort, to trust Crowley and obey him; he was able to let go of something deep within, some shame or anxiety so old and deep he barely registered its presence. “Like this…?”

“Like that. Beautiful. So perfect.” Crowley moved against him, and suddenly they were skin to skin, not a breath between them. Crowley was hard and hot between his thighs, and he was flush against Crowley’s lower abdomen.

For a moment they just clung to each other. Aziraphale couldn’t believe that they could be _here_, both alive and free and touching as closely as this, and he could feel Crowley’s own wonder too. Aziraphale kissed him with gentleness more than passion, just for a moment, in a confirmation. To set a seal upon this freedom and communion.

Then Crowley surged against him, and Aziraphale gasped again; his kisses tasted of the chocolate geld they’d eaten, and it made him laugh, the beautiful detail of it. Crowley gave a half-laugh in response, and then a fuller one when he thrusted, and Aziraphale’s giggle turned into a moan.

He thought of Gabriel only once. The angle at which Crowley moved across him brought him too close, made him feel the touch of flesh against his buttocks. Aziraphale was suddenly flooded with the fear and the memory of it.

Crowley slowed again and smoothed it all away: he brought their building pace down, like Aziraphale had been able to control the flame of the gas stove, and every thought Aziraphale could feel against his skin was _love_ and _beautiful_ and _so good_, and everything around him was soft and dim.

The only sounds were of their breathing and their heartbeats and their slow, slick movement, not cracking leaves and the dull slaps and thuds of violence on flesh. The only smells were of Crowley’s hair and Aleppo soap and clean cotton, no mulch or trees or topsoil. In front of his eyes wasn’t holly, close enough to scratch his eyelids. Just Crowley’s eyes, lambent and golden.

It built between them again. They were moving with each other, but also against each other – “Counterpoint,” Aziraphale said out loud, _leave us the counterpoint, _and then the context of the quotation was swept away with all other conscious thought.

He understood now why the English poets talked of _coming_ – it was unbearable, to have Crowley be so close to him, and yet apart. He longed to sink into him; even the space between atoms was too great a distance. “Come,” he begged, voice raw, “please, come to me-“

Crowley groaned and pressed their foreheads together with such force that Aziraphale saw stars. He felt the warm wetness on his legs, but Crowley had stopped moving – Crowley was tight against him, breathing anguished, and Aziraphale felt desperation scrabbling at his skin: a strange sensation of something just beyond his reach, slipping away. Later he’d think of it as the prow of ship slicing through a wave before it could crest. If Crowley wasn’t moving then Aziraphale would – he rubbed the underside of his penis against the length of Crowley’s, and whined in relief.

This roused Crowley, and suddenly there was a slick, gentle hand reaching down between them, and Crowley’s tongue in his mouth; Aziraphale thrust against him, unthinking, hips bucking of their own accord.

His eyes fluttered closed; spasms, a clenching deep inside him. It was like a pulse – he had pulled his mouth from Crowley’s to bury his face in the crook of Crowley’s neck, and the pulse inside him was like the pulse of blood under his lips, like the pulse of _loveyouloveyouloveyou _he could feel wherever Crowley’s body was hard against his own.

It mounted higher. There was a final deep clutching, and then release, warm on his skin. He sighed raggedly, and the fast, throbbing tide slowed to ripples up his spine.

He felt heavy with the pleasure of it – overwhelmed by relaxation, turning his limbs to lead. He could slip into sleep like this. In this joy. In this warmth. He knew he must be rosy red, Love’s proper hue…

But Crowley’s fist was still tight in his hair, and the long body pressed against his own was trembling.

“Darling…?” Aziraphale asked softly. He might be lacking in experience, but he knew that Crowley had (he couldn’t even think the word) _enjoyed himself_ too.

And yet he still trembled. Unease began to send restlessness under Aziraphale’s skin. He remembered that Crowley had been thinking about this – fantasising – that Crowley had expectations older and more entrenched than Aziraphale’s own. The fear that he had disappointed his lover rose in him.

Crowley growled; he must have felt it, skin to skin as they were. “No,” he said. His voice was raw. “No, no. Angel. I didn’t mean to- I wanted you to finish first-“

“Oh, it’s fine – fine, fine, lovely one, all fine,” Aziraphale said, rolling over to pin Crowley to the bed, to pin down whatever thoughts were so distressing him. “I didn’t know it was so marvellous…”

Crowley’s breath hitched, and his eyes were glowing, golden and wide. “Need to be closer – I need to be closer, I need you-“

Aziraphale nodded to tell him that he had felt the same, the same need to be _closer, closer_. "Need you. Deeper. God, I love you."

"Fuck," Crowley said again, and held up his right hand, palm out. "Aziraphale, _please_."

He abandoned flesh and blood and bone; abandoned the remnants of the heaviness of physical pleasure. He grasped Crowley's hand with his own, and then both fell as they rose out of the corporations like a turn in the wind, or the glitter of frost on the air. Aziraphale was free in the darkness, reaching out blindly for Crowley, and he rushed into his beloved even as his beloved poured into him.

*

On the rare, rare occasions that Crowley had thought about mingling, he’d remembered it in terms of light. Each angel a beam of light of one colour or another, blending to create something new and bright.

Demons weren't beams of light. Even when they were incorporeal, they weren't _ethereal_. They were like smoke: thick, noxious, cloying. He'd never wanted Aziraphale to see him like that. 

But the need had been too great - the despair that followed his orgasm, the terrible clarity, the fear of abandonment. He had reached out with no forethought left in him, only the instinct of the brokenhearted. _Stay with me. Don't leave me. Don't leave me alone_.

And Aziraphale had responded with that recklessly kind action that was the very best of him, and there wasn't time for self-consciousness as they reached for each other in the darkness of their incorporeal forms.

They met, and Crowley's universe was full of light as he and Aziraphale fell into each other. Aziraphale was _all light_, the soft white-blue he had seen in past miracles and apparitions. But it was dimmer than Crowley remembered. The shaft of light that his soul conceptualised as Aziraphale was ragged still, torn and tattered. Not as much as it had been - there was light again after all, and colour - but fragile enough to make him ache with the need to _enfold_ and _protect_. 

And so they mingled, light and smoke, as no angel and demon ever had before.

It was beautiful, Crowley suddenly thought. He'd never expected that it could look _beautiful_. Light illuminating smoke, smoke lending texture and movement to light. It was like a room full of incense suddenly pierced by shafts of blinding sunlight, creating dazzling-bright columns sparkling with dust motes. Stars being born in a nebula.

He felt Aziraphale's surprise and delight too, as though they were his own; the line between them was blurring, and Crowley had the strange sensation of looking at Aziraphale, and looking at themselves _with_ Aziraphale, and looking at his own self _as_ Aziraphale. And he could see, emerging slowly, his own light, deep flashes of amber (_plants-trees-resin-amber_, Aziraphale thought in him) and he could see the faintest tendrils of Aziraphale's own smokiness, wisps of ivory and shimmers of blue, like the surface of a moonstone, and overwhelmingly smelling of frankincense.

He looked beyond the tatters that tore at him - those swirls of smoke were like swirls of ink, mingling with gold - an illuminated manuscript, lacquer - dark lines and white spaces and gilt edgings, turning into music or poetry or the crosswords he so enjoyed - Crowley felt that too, the satisfaction of an answer falling into place, the heady relief of certainty in something. And he could feel too Aziraphale's own awe at the excitement of a question unanswered, of the urge and need to burrow and dig until the knowledge was won, was snatched. The excitement in the depths of oneself in the fleeing and the hunting and the riot of the heart.

He saw himself as Aziraphale saw him. He saw his own hips swaying, and the curve of his body, and the plane of his neck, and the glitter of fire in his hair like russet silk, like copper, like autumn. He heard laughter; he felt it pinch his sides and hurt his throat, and saw his own eyes like he’d never seen them in a mirror or a window or a still pool. They weren’t the sick, rotten yellow of sulphur, cut open with jagged slits. They were honey and gold and saffron, they were the centres of lilies, oh, and they were _expressive_; he felt his heart lift at the sight of his own eyes smiling, he felt it drop at the sight of them glancing away.

_Beautiful_, Aziraphale was assuring him, _beautiful, beautiful, so beautiful, love, I love you, I love your eyes, beautiful eyes._

_Beautiful, _he echoed back, _everything - show you, want to show you. _He showed him Aziraphale's wing over his head at the first rainstorm. He showed him the stars in Aziraphale's eyes, the moonlight in his hair. And Aziraphale showed him Crowley's hair close to him, huddling for warmth and comfort, and how reassured he felt. The alleviation of loneliness for just a moment.

Oh, Crowley saw stretches of loneliness like he'd only ever seen in himself. Miles and centuries and deaths and silences, and then a star, a red star, like Antares. Lone stars became a constellation, gathered close enough to form a galaxy, until he saw himself at the centre of Aziraphale's heart, blazing away, pulling him close.

If he'd had a head he would have nodded. _Yes yes yes yes_ \- the white-blue star he circled, the white-blue star which kept him on Earth, kept him from hurtling lost and scared into space. _Alpha Centuri_, he thought, and knew that Aziraphale could see it then as he saw it. He felt the great surge of guilt and fear in Aziraphale, and twined around it. No need. No need for any of that. He could bask in the love beaming from that white-blue star forever.

The light and the smoke curled and shifted, creating something tangible and new and unique, glowing and glittering with the love and admiration and laughter they showed to each other with the enthusiasm of children sharing some new discovery: _look, this is for you, this is all for you, this is yours, I made it for you, I found it for you, all for you, only you._

There was darkness, too. There had to be, to see stars. They could both see shame and guilt, fear and insecurity: their selfishnesses and ignorances and prejudices and cowardices and cruelties. They saw, and neither pulled away. Instead they pressed closer to each other, embraced with renewed passion and gentleness. _I know, I know, I know, I see, I know. I love you. I know and I love you._

The joy and generosity of it was overwhelming. The utter defencelessness, the utter adoration which Crowley had never known. It was heavy in him. He could drown in it.

It was Aziraphale who cradled him with sweet thoughts of how beautiful he was, how clever, how gentle and brave and how _loved_, who guided them back down, who somehow found their forms on a foreign plane. 

His body felt cold. Physical sensation gripped him, then grounded him. He opened his eyes. Next to him, Aziraphale's chest was heaving, and he looked around in a daze.

The curtains of the room were limned with bright sunlight.

It surprised a laugh out of Crowley, and he gathered the angel into his arms. "That was-"

"Very enjoyable," Aziraphale said airily. "Very pleasant."

"Bastard," Crowley said, and gave a playful bite to Aziraphale's shoulder. He understood, now. Now, he knew. "Cheeky sod."

"Marks out of ten?"

"Six and a half. Seven, as you're a beginner," Crowley said, and Aziraphale giggled as he pressed close.

"Wicked. Come on. I'll run you a hot bath - that'll get your blood flowing again."

"Only if you join me in it."

"No choice in the matter." Aziraphale kissed his lips, then his forehead, then his hair. "My own darling Crowley. I love you. I love you."


End file.
